The need for a special tactics unit incorporated under the command of the Border Police has become more and more obvious in recent years. As the number of yearly operations grew, so did their complexity, and units from other structures of the Ministery of Administration and Interior were routinely used for specific operations across Romania's borders.

SASI is used to capture dangerous criminals while they are attempting to either enter or leave the country. Besides this, the unit also offers protection to Border Police officers, who's lives have faced an increasing number of threats in recent years, coming from multinational criminal organizations.

Apparently SASI coordinates and trains the regional rapid intervention detachments of the Border Police, although it is unclear if those detachments still exist as stand-alone units (DPFIR) or if they simply represent the local SASI teams.

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No details have been made public so far about the standards of admission into SASI, however we could get a good idea about that if we look at its members. Since the unit was cropped up on a relative short period of time, most of its members were drafted from other existing units in MAI. As such, SASI is currently composed of experienced ex-members of DIAS, SPIR, SIIAS and the Police Flagrant Arrest sections across the country. Most of these individuals have around 10 or 15 years of experience in special police activities and they have probably transfered to SASI due to personal reasons (moving closer to their family or moving back to their native city which might be around the border).

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Interestingly enough, this unit trains on a constant basis with the top edge of MAI's units, GSPI Acvila.

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One month after its creation, in november 2005, the new SASI unit participated at a weapons presentation which was organized at the headquarters of the Border Police in Bucharest. Present there were members of the Acvila unit, as well as Agripa Popescu, the representative for Romania of the Austrian Glock company.

After inspecting the weapons offered at the presentation, and most especially, after being adviced by members of the Acvila unit, SASI management chose the future weapons which will be employed by their agents.

The main weapon of choise will be the globally employed MP5 submachinegun, the Glock 17 pistol as well as the Sig Sauer 9mm pistol.

SASI snipers will be using Maverick and Benelli rifles.

Since it's unclear if the creation of SASI had disbanded the previous 5 regional DPFIR's, the order of battle of SASI remains a speculation.
SASI might have a main detachment in Bucharest and 5 smaller ones in the regional centers, it might have 5 regional detachments only, or, although unlikely, the whole unit might be located entirely in Bucharest.

This unit is new and information about large scale exercises with Romanian or international partners has not yeet been made publicly available.

SASI was called to action very soon after its creation.

On October 10, 2005, members of SASI have arrested a group of 6 individuals which were affiliated with an illegal immigration network. The arrest took place on Henri Coanda International Airport, Romania's largest and most important airport, and with this occasion the sum of 7,700 euros was also confiscated from the group.

Just over a week later, on October 18, 2005, SASI agents have arrested six other individuals which were trying to sell 500 g of selenium (a radioactive metal), which is worth around 30 million euros on the black market.

No further data about SASI operations has been released, but from the two examples above we can already determine that they are most certainly not short of activities.

We must also mention in this section the fact that Romania has captured several tons of illicit drugs at its borders in the past few years. Besides that, the Romanian Border Police has stopped tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from reaching countries such as Germany and the UK, anihilated hundreds of human trafficking groups and freed several hundreds of individuals held captive by those groups (usually on foreign soil).

Despite all this, no mention of any of these operations was made in any global news networks; however it is extremely sad that mass-media groups such as CNN, Euronews, Financial Times and others have mentioned on a regular basis the "amazing contribution" of the Bulgarian Border Police at stopping drug and immigrant trafficking in Europe, although the total quantities of drugs captured by our Bulgarian friends is several dozens of times smaller than the one captured in Romania. This example is not unique nor isolated, and it is worth to mention the dubious way in which large press organizations choose which story to publish and which to keep under the key.

Since this unit is new and its activities are not usually made public, no stories can be published here as of now.