Mobile Gendarmerie

The Departmental Gendarmerie[b] also contributed platoons composed of gendarmes on temporary duty taken from local brigades[c] but these men had received no specific training in crowd control, were not under the command of their regular officers and this service was not popular as it took the men away from the brigades for weeks at a time and considerably disrupted the service.

[3] More than 6,000 GMR gendarmes fought in 1940, either as in-line Gendarmerie combat units or as detached personnel seconded to the Army, more than 300 of them has been killed.

It was attached first to the minimal French Armistice Army remaining in the unoccupied zone, and then to the Ministry of the Interior after the whole country was occupied in the wake of the Allied landings in Africa in November 1942.

In 2009, the Gendarmerie, although remaining part of the French Armed Forces, was attached to the Ministry of the Interior, which already supervised the National Police, without any change to its mission.

As a consequence of that change, the formal requisition process which the Ministry of the Interior needed in order to use Mobile Gendarmerie forces is not used anymore.

A grouping (French: Groupement de gendarmerie mobile, or GGM) is an administrative echelon under the command of a lieutenant-colonel, a "full" colonel or a Brigadier General.

Groupings are comparable to battalions or regiments but, contrary to theses units, their size is not standardized as they include from four to ten squadrons.

Its missions include counter-terrorism, hostage rescue, surveillance of national threats, protection of government officials and targeting of organized crime.

The DGGN can take charge in a major crisis; however, most of the day-to-day missions are conducted in support of local units of the Departmental Gendarmerie.

In addition to the main unit, based in Satory, there are fourteen GIGN regional branches (seven in metropolitan France and seven in the overseas departments and territories).