To protect Taiwan from China, US is training Navy SEALs unit that killed Osama bin Laden: Report

Security forces in the US are undergoing intense training but it isn’t for the country, they are prepping up to help Taiwan from any possible invasion from China.

A report by Financial Times quoted people familiar with the developments as saying that Seal Team 6, the clandestine US Navy commando unit that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, has been training for missions to support Taiwan if China tries to invade the democratic island which it claims as its territory.

Seal Team 6 is a “tier one” force and is the most elite in the US military, alongside the Army’s storied Delta Force.  

Contingency preparations

As per the report, Seal Team 6, which is involved in US military’s most sensitive and arduous mission, has been planning and training for a Taiwan conflict for over a year at Dam Neck, its headquarters at Virginia Beach.

Preparations have intensified since 2021 when the US Indo-Pacific commander had warned that China could attack Taiwan in six years.

Though America has persistently believed that conflict with China is “neither imminent nor inevitable,” the US military has braced up contingency preparations as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) continues to rampantly modernise to meet Xi Jinping’s order that it has the capability by 2027 to attack or invade Taiwan by force.

China says it remains committed to peaceful “reunification” with Taiwan but has not ruled out the use of force. Last year, Xi told a European official that he believed that the US was trying to goad China into war.

Over recent years, the Pentagon has also increased the number of special forces in Taiwan for missions that involve providing training for the Taiwanese military.

As per the FT report, last week CIA director Bill Burns said that 20 per cent of his budget was devoted to China, a 200 per cent rise over three years.

Also, recently, the head of US Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Samuel Paparo, said that the US military would turn the Taiwan Strait into an “unmanned hellscape” if China was about to attack.  

Paparo went on to say that it would involve unmanned submarines, ships and drones to make it harder for the PLA to launch an invasion across the strait, which separates Taiwan from China.

‘No surprise’

“That Seal Team 6 is planning for possible Taiwan-related missions should come as no surprise,” the report quoted Sean Naylor, author of Relentless Strike, a book on Joint Special Operations Command who runs an online national security publication, The High Side, as saying.

“With the Pentagon’s reorientation over the past few years to focus on great power competition, it was inevitable that even the nation’s most elite counterterrorism units would seek out roles in that arena, for that path leads to relevance, missions and money,” Naylor further said.

Why is the US helping Taiwan? 

Under the Taiwan Relations Act, the US is committed to helping Taiwan in its self-defense efforts. Historically, the US has followed a policy of “strategic ambiguity,” avoiding mentioning if it would defend Taiwan. However, President Joe Biden has repeatedly indicated that the US forces would defend Taiwan in the event of an unprovoked attack by China.

“Taiwan is the most sensitive issue in US-China relations, and tensions over the island have been a critical part of backchannel discussions between US national security adviser Jake Sullivan and China’s top foreign policy official Wang Yi, over the past year,” the FT report quoted US and Chinese officials as saying.