Hostage Rescue Team

Hostage Rescue Team

The FBI Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) is the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation's counter-terrorism paramilitary tactical team. The HRT is trained to rescue U.S. citizens and allies who are held by a hostile force, either terrorist or criminal. The Hostage Rescue Team was founded in 1982 by Danny Coulson and completed its final certification exercise in October 1983.

The HRT's purpose is to serve as a domestic counter-terrorism unit, offering a tactical resolution option in hostage and high-risk law enforcement situations. It was originally composed of 50 operators; however, this number has since increased to well over 90 full-time operators. The HRT commonly functions as a national SWAT team in highly sensitive or dangerous situations. Today it is part of the Tactical Support Branch of the FBI's Critical Incident Response Group (CIRG) and is based at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.

Read more about Hostage Rescue Team:  History, Capabilities, Roles, Selection and Training, Operations, Weapons, Casualties, Notable Operators

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