Police have no intelligence to suggest terrorists are planning to mount an attack on Scotland.
Senior officers insisted there was “no specific threat” to the country in the wake of the Paris attacks but revealed they have changed training and planning in the wake of the massacre in the French capital.
Following the shootings two weeks ago, which claimed the lives of 130 people, high-ranking officers in Scotland briefed the press on Police Scotland’s capacity to deal with a similar attack.
The threat level in the UK has been classed as “severe” for more than a year, meaning an attack is “highly likely”.
Detective Chief Superintendent Gerry McLean, head of the organised crime and counter terrorism unit, said: “At this time, I can say there’s no specific intelligence that indicates any threat to Scotland or its communities.”
Assistant Chief Constable Ruaraidh Nicolson said while there was no indication an attack is being planned, officers were taking the same steps as colleagues in England to fight terrorism.
He told a briefing at the Scottish Crime Campus at Gartcosh, North Lanarkshire: “We don’t have a specific threat in Scotland but we wouldn’t want Scotland to feel like it is the soft underbelly, so we’re working in exactly the same way as south of the border.
“Are terrorists focused on Scotland at this moment in time? From the information that we have, they aren’t. But does that mean we wouldn’t have an attack here? I just can’t say that, so we need to plan.
“We’re doing a lot of work in the background, so you might not see a huge number of extra police officers on the ground, but there is a huge amount of work in the background to try to prevent this from happening in the first place.
“We want to look at radicalisation and stop that from happening. Then if it does happen, we have to be prepared as well.”
Police said they had seen a three-fold increase in the intelligence they receive from communities about a possible threat in the two weeks since the attacks in Paris.
There has also been a “spike” in hate crimes since then, with 51 such incidents reported in the week leading up to November 13, compared to more than 130 in the two weeks since the atrocity.
Police Scotland has about 275 officers who patrol in armed response vehicles (ARVs) with the force also having a number of specialist firearms officers, including counter-terrorist specialists.
In addition, there are a “significant number” of other officers who are trained to use weapons if needed, although the force insists the exact number is “operationally sensitive”.
Assistant Chief Constable Bernard Higgins said: “If we had a Paris-style attack and it was in one of our major cities, then almost certainly there would be ARVs in that area.
“So there would be a response, but when you see the ferocity of the Paris attack, that’s what we are training our ARV officers, in fact all our firearms officers, to understand the threat they might face.”
He also said forces across the UK had changed their assumptions about terror attacks in the last two weeks.
Mr Higgins said: “Up until Paris, the planning assumption was based on a two-site attack and what the police capability was to respond.
“Clearly in Paris there was a significant number of sites, seven different locations, and our planning assumptions have got to evolve around what we know.
“Around the UK, work is ongoing to see how the UK policing service would respond to such an attack, what our capability and capacity is to do so.”
Police Scotland has carried out more than 60 exercises over the last two yearsaimed at testing the response of officers and others to a terrorist attack.
On November 10, just three days before the Paris attacks, hundreds of people were involved in a major event, which simulated a plane being taken hostage.
RyanAir provided the police with an aircraft to use for the exercise at Prestwick which tested the response of firearms officers, along with police intelligence and negotiation skills.
Mr Higgins also said exercises in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee had tested how quickly ARVs could be on the scene if terrorists armed with guns went on the rampage.
He said: “I was personally assured in terms of the length of time it took the response vehicles to get the location where we were having this simulated attack.”
He also stressed: “There has been no knee-jerk reaction by Police Scotland, we’ve been doing this for the past two-and-a-half years.”
While the Scottish Police Federation (SPF) claimed earlier this week that the country needed more armed officers and was “woefully under-equipped, under-resourced and under-prepared” for an attack like the one on the French capital, Mr Higgins insisted Police Scotland has “the same firearms capability of any major UK force”.
He stated: “The weapons systems we use – which is a fancy way of saying guns – they’re more than sufficient for the job we want our firearms officers to do.
“Our officers are trained tactically, they’re trained how to shoot, where to shoot, when to shoot and the calibre of the weapon they have will obviously deliver fatal consequences.”
He said he had “no difficulty” with what the SPF had said, adding: “Their role is to protect their members and if they believe their members are at risk they are duty-bound to raise concerns about that.”