Special Assault Team

The is a police tactical unit in major Japanese prefectural police departments, supervised by the National Police Agency.

The SAT is a national-level counter-terrorism unit that cooperates with territorial-level Anti-Firearms Squads and Counter-NBC Terrorism Squads. Most information on the unit has been confidential, its existence officially revealed only in 1996.

The SAT is officially known in Japanese as simply and individual teams officially take the name of the Metropolitan or Prefectural police departments to which they are assigned; an example would be for the SAT unit assigned to the Tokyo Metropolitan Area.

Background

By the mid-1970s, Japanese law enforcement already established the , part-time sniper squads being launched as a response to the Kin Kiro Incident in 1968. Assault sections were later established in some urban squads; these squads were predecessors of the Anti-firearms squads, but they were only part-time SWAT teams at this time.

In response to the Dhaka Incident, the National Police Agency decided to set up full-time anti-terrorism special units at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and the Osaka Prefectural Police Department in secret. The Tokyo unit was established as the of its 6th Riot Police Unit and the Osaka unit as the "Zero" Company of its 2nd Riot Police Unit. The Tokyo unit was nicknamed SAP (Special Armed Police), and it was recognized as the official name around 1982 and the flag was awarded. Several SAP officers were sent to West Germany to be trained by GSG-9 operators due to their experience in resolving the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 181. They were instructed on using MP5s, which they first used in the 1980s.

In 1996, it was officially announced that the tactical units had been organized, and their unit name were changed to SAT, Special Assault Teams. In addition to the MPD and Osaka, teams in Hokkaido, Kanagawa, Chiba, Aichi, Fukuoka Prefectural Police were also established. In 2005, a team of the Okinawa Prefectural Police was established, and existing units were also reinforced.

Organization

Structure

SAT teams are set up at eight Prefectural Police Departments. In most prefectures they belong to the Riot Police Unit, but in the MPD it is directly under its First Security Division, and the Security Division in the Osaka.

Total strength is about 300 officers. It is said that three teams in the Metropolitan Police Department, two teams in the Osaka Prefectural Police Department, and one team in each of the other Prefectural Police are set up. Each team consists of a command section, an entry section, a sniper support section, and a technical support section.

Recruitment and training

Members are recruited from Riot Police Units. When the unit was founded, the members were selected from rangers, rescue specialists, snipers and martial artists. It is said that they will be subject to inspection and inspection for officers under 30 years old. In order to maintain physical strength, the period of service is assumed to be approximately 5 years. Graduates are usually transferred to other departments in the Security Bureau, but some are transferred to the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the criminal investigation department to introduce their high SWAT capability to the detectives.

Although SAT training is enigmatic, a retired SAP member recalled that Airborne Ranger Courses of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, counter-insurgency, and air assault training had been conducted. Nowadays, SAT has training facilities in six locations nationwide, and training at Yumenoshima is sometimes released to reporters. There were also exchanges with overseas police forces, at least with joint training with the German GSG 9. 10 SAT officers were placed under training by Queensland Police's Specialist Service Branch in Queensland, Australia.

The SAT does joint exercises with the SFGp.
The SAT also conducted a joint training in 2014 with Italy's elite State Police special unit NOCS (Central Operative Security Nucleus)

Equipment

In addition to standard service handguns, the SAP units used Heckler & Koch P9S pistols as their main sidearms. After being reorganized into the SAT, usage of Heckler & Koch USP and Smith & Wesson Model 3913 have been confirmed, there is information that Glock 19, SIG Sauer P226 and Beretta 92 Vertec are adopted.

The SAT used Heckler & Koch MP5A5, MP5SD6, MP5K submachine guns. There is also information that SAT units have adopted Howa Type 89 assault rifles and M4 carbines.

The Howa Golden Bear, then M1500 as their sniper rifle. The Howa Type 64 rifle was also used as designated marksman rifles. Later on, the Heckler & Koch PSG1 and L96A1 also have been deployed.

SAT teams operate special and unmarked bulletproof cars.

The first units stood up in the 1970s had its operators forced to initially purchase tactical equipment with their own money through mail-in ads in military magazines.

Operational history

The "Zero" Company of the Osaka Prefectural Police had its first known incident on January 26, 1979 when they were deployed during a Mitsubishi Bank hostage incident in Osaka. In the incident, they shot dead Akiyoshi Umekawa after he gunned down two employees and two policemen.

As the SWAT ability of other departments improved, the SAT became the "last ditch" of the Security Bureau of the National Police Agency, and opportunities to conduct direct domestic action decreased. In the Gulf Crisis of 1990, the SAP unit was dispatched to Saudi Arabia for non-combatant evacuation operation. During the Japanese embassy hostage crisis in Peru, the SAT had simulated raids on retaking buildings similar to the Japanese Embassy as a possible counter-measure to a similar incident on Japanese soil.

On June 21, 1995, All Nippon Airways Flight 857 was hijacked at the Hakodate Airport

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