The elite Navy special forces team, which is tasked with some of the military’s most sensitive and difficult missions, has been planning and training for a Taiwan conflict for more than a year at Dam Neck, its headquarters at Virginia Beach, about 250 kilometres from Washington, Paralel.Az reports citing Financial Times.

The secret training underlines the US’s increased focus on boosting deterrence to make China think twice about attacking Taiwan, while stepping up preparations in case President Xi Jinping orders the People’s Liberation Army to attack or invade the island.

The preparations have only grown since the former US Indo-Pacific commander, Phil Davidson, warned in 2021 that China could attack Taiwan within six years.

While US officials stress that conflict with China is “neither imminent nor inevitable”, the US military has accelerated contingency preparations as the PLA rapidly modernises to meet Mr Xi’s order that it have the capability by 2027 to take Taiwan by force.

Seal Team 6 is a “tier one” force – the most elite in the US military – alongside the army’s storied Delta Force. It reports to Joint Special Operations Command, which is part of Special Operations Command.

In another mission that has helped cement Seal Team 6 in military history, the unit rescued Richard Phillips, the captain of the Maersk Alabama container ship taken hostage by Somali pirates in 2009.

The Pentagon has also sent more regular special forces to Taiwan for missions that include training for the Taiwanese military.

But the Seal Team 6 activities are far more sensitive because its covert missions are highly classified. The people familiar with the team’s planning did not provide details about the missions for which it was preparing.

Special Operations Command, which rarely discusses Seal Team 6, referred questions about its Taiwan planning to the Pentagon, which did not comment on specific details. A spokesman said the defence department and its forces “prepare and train for a wide range of contingencies”.

As the threat from terror groups has receded, special operations forces have joined the rest of the US military and the intelligence community in intensifying their focus on China.

CIA director Bill Burns told the Financial Times last week that 20 per cent of his budget was devoted to China, a 200 per cent rise in three years.

“That Seal Team 6 is planning for possible Taiwan-related missions should come as no surprise,” said Sean Naylor, author of Relentless Strike, a book on Joint Special Operations Command.

Mr Naylor and Jack Murphy also curate The High Side, an online platform that publishes US national security content.

“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,” Mr Naylor said.

Taiwan is the most sensitive issue in US-China relations, and tensions over the island have been a critical part of back-channel discussions between US national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Wang Yi, China’s top foreign policy official, over the past year.

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

Washington is obliged to help Taiwan provide for its own defence under the Taiwan Relations Act. The US has long had a policy of “strategic ambiguity” in which it does not say if it would come to the defence of Taiwan. But President Joe Biden has said US forces would defend Taiwan in the face of an unprovoked attack from China.

Admiral Samuel Paparo, the head of US Indo-Pacific command, recently said the US military would turn the Taiwan Strait into an “unmanned hellscape” if China were about to attack. He said it would involve unmanned submarines, ships and drones to make it much harder for the PLA to launch an invasion across the strait, which separates Taiwan from China.

The Pentagon said the US was committed to the “one China policy” under which it recognises Beijing as the sole government of China, while acknowledging – without accepting – the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China.