Video: Japanese Police Battle Terrorists

I just came across this video clip of a news report about an anti-terror training exercise held by Japanese police. In the exercise, police are confronting international terrorists who have smuggled themselves into Tokyo in shipping containers:

The YouTube version of this video was labeled “cool terror training” [かっこいいテロ訓練] by the Japanese user who uploaded it in May 2007, and I can’t argue with the action movie style awesome-ness of the battle. However, it would probably be better to replace the word “cool” with “unrealistic” when describing the training event, since it’s far more probable that today’s international terrorists would simply blow themselves up and kill police officers in the blast instead of engaging in ridiculous martial arts battles. There is questionable wisdom in having dozens of police officers approach shipping containers that are likely filled with explosives, and I doubt their riot shields would provide sufficient protection against suicide bombers. The video also gives me the impression that the police response to an armed criminal firing a pistol at them would be to duck behind riot shields and shout for the criminal to drop his weapon instead of returning fire, an impression that I hope is mistaken.

International terrorists probably won’t be attacking Japan in the near future, but if they do, I hope the police have actually prepared for more realistic scenarios