On 25 September I spent the day at the headquarters of GSG 9 der Bundespolizei in Sankt Augustin-Hangelar, near Bonn, as a guest at the Gästeschießen 2026. I hadn’t been back in that world since my tenure as Defence Attaché to Germany, Austria and Switzerland ended, and I wasn’t sure how it would feel. A little like returning to a school you left years ago, I suppose.
It felt good. And it was a pleasure to meet Dr.-Ing. Jens Bodo Koch, CEO of Heckler & Koch, for the first time since I finished my posting.
The day got me thinking about two things that belong together and rarely get discussed together: where India’s National Security Guard comes from, and what is in its hands.
A unit born out of a bad month
GSG 9 was set up in September 1972, weeks after the Munich Olympics massacre. In October 1977 it stormed the hijacked Lufthansa aircraft at Mogadishu and brought the hostages out, and that operation is still the reference point for hijack-rescue forces almost everywhere.
The NSG was raised on 16 October 1984, in the shadow of Operation Blue Star and the assassination of Indira Gandhi, and open sources agree it was modelled on the British SAS and on GSG 9. I’ve heard it said, and have probably said it myself in a loose moment, that GSG 9 “set up” the NSG. I’d be careful with that. The public record supports the model. I couldn’t find a documented German training team in India in the 1980s, and I’m not going to invent one.
The hands-on contact came later. After the 2008 Mumbai attacks, an NSG team led by its Director General visited GSG 9 near Bonn in November 2009, with urban counter-terror work as the focus. Joint exercises followed at Manesar.
What the Black Cats carry
Look at the NSG’s published equipment list and the German thread is hard to miss: the H&K MP5, the PSG-1 and MSG-90 sniper rifles. Other makers appear too, so it isn’t a pure H&K shop. But the MP5 has been the working weapon of Indian special units for decades.
That matters more than it sounds. An elite unit builds its drills around a weapon, and you don’t casually swap that. And a rifle is only as good as the spares behind it.
The years the relationship went quiet
Germany for many years restricted small arms sales to countries outside the EU, NATO and a short list of equivalents, on human rights grounds, and India was caught up in that along with everybody else. In November 2016 Heckler & Koch announced it would stop signing new contracts outside NATO and its partners.
I’ll concede the German side readily. A government that answers to its parliament about where its weapons end up isn’t being unreasonable. But the policy treated a federal counter-terror unit, one that fights hostage-takers rather than demonstrators, as if it were any state police battalion. That did little for human rights and quite a lot for Chinese, Russian and Israeli competitors, who faced no such limits. The result was a loyal user base that couldn’t easily get parts.
To be fair to India, procurement here has its own habits. But the specific problem of a German weapon in Indian hands that couldn’t be supported was made in Berlin.
What’s changed
Slowly, in the way German decisions usually change. In April 2024 Germany granted a licence allowing the NSG to buy spare parts and accessories for its MP5s, described by one official as a huge exception. In September 2025, according to Indian media, Dr. Jaishankar asked Foreign Minister Wadephul to speed up clearances for MP5 spares, and Chancellor Merz was reported to be open to reviewing the export rules. That last point is reported, not something I’ve confirmed first-hand.
Is that a revival? Partly. A licence for spares isn’t a new defence partnership. It reopens a door that had been shut for a long time. Whether anybody walks through depends on the next several decisions.
Why a shooting day matters
A guest shoot won’t produce a procurement policy, and I’d be embarrassed to suggest it would. But the people who write the recommendations and brief the ministers are shaped by who they know and trust. I saw that in four years as an attaché, and I saw it again at Hangelar. Relationships that lapse during a long chill don’t restart because a policy paper says they should. Someone has to turn up, shake hands, remember a name.
I came away with a clear sense that Heckler & Koch’s interest in India is genuine and long-standing. Decades of an MP5 in the hands of a force like the NSG build a lot of goodwill. It would be a shame to spend it by never calling.
The NSG marked its raising day on 16 October. The guns its operators carry were made in Germany, and the doctrine behind them has a good deal of Sankt Augustin in it. Worth remembering, and worth looking after.
This is a shorter version of the piece. The full argument, with all the sourcing, is on iyersellmer.com.
