No, this is not the same “Ruthless terrorist organization, determined to rule the world” from G.I. Joe. COBRA is Austria’s counter terrorist group. They act more like a hybrid of SWAT and GSG9.

Here is an article about their operations of 2014. I had my Austrian friend David translate some of it for me.

He wrote this about the article

On an average they have 27 operations a day. (From little stuff like drunken fools who lock themselves up with their guns, to bank robberies, up to joint operations against jihadi recruiting cells like a few months ago.) The last operation was also mentioned in the article and how quietly it was carried out in about 20 places at the same time. Also the article says, that the ministry of interior is trying to work closer with the jewish community to show them that they are not left alone in the light of the recent attacks in Europe

In my opinion the Cobra is much more like a SWAT team. They are regarded as one of the leading SF forces of the police forces worldwide. They’ve won the 3rd Annual Warrior Competition in Jordan in 2011, next to GSG9 or Force Recon. http://warriorcompetition.com/home/index.php/competitions/championslist#3rd-annual-warrior-competition-2011

They have different departments from SWAT teams, bomb defusal teams, bodyguards and air marshals. Like everywhere they are massively underfunded, which led to the death of some officers last year during a police operation against a poacher who had a fully automatic assault rifle (illegally – you can only own semi autos here, as you might remember).

I ran into two of the Cobra bodyguards yesterday at a conference, where they were guarding one of the ambassadors. They were quite cynic about the article and laughed it off.

Here an Austrian article about the Poacher from 2013.

Here are some pics of the COBRA unit.

They are using Steyer Augs and Glocks.

This sniper is using a Steyr Mannlicher SSG08

Same with this guy in Pencott Greenzone camo.