Philippine and U.S. Navy SEALs secured a gas and oil platform in the South China Sea in the latest joint combined exchange training between the two special operations units near the disputed waters last week.
Photos released by U.S. Naval Special Warfare Group One, the command responsible for California and Guam-based SEAL teams, revealed a roughly week-long training activity in the Municipality of El Nido with Philippine forces. Activities included tactical combat casualty care, room clearing and the seizure of a defunct offshore platform.
While the training between American special forces and their Philippine counterparts has occurred since Washington’s counterterrorism efforts in the early 2000s, recent training has evolved to include more activities in the South China Sea-facing province of Palawan. The island is the staging point for many of Manila’s operations to resupply outposts and uphold its presence in the disputed waters. A training activity from last fall depicted American advisors training Philippine Coast Guard personnel in “defensive tactics” and responding to “non-compliant vessels.”
Philippine SEALs were attacked by Chinese Coastguardsmen at Second Thomas Shoal during an incident in June, which saw one SEAL lose his thumb following a boat collision. An American Task Force named after the Philippine designation for the shoal, Ayungin, was made public last fall during former Secretary of Defense Austin’s visit to Palawan.
“NSW provides maritime special operations force capabilities to enable Joint Force lethality and survivability inside denied and contested areas,” stated a caption from one of the photos.
This is also not the first time that American and Philippine special operations forces have practiced boarding and seizing the platforms. The 2023 iteration of Balikatan, the premier annual military exercise held between Washington and Manila, saw a “search and seizure” of the defunct Masinloc rig.
Located on the northwestern tip of Palawan, El Nido’s tourism and energy industries are located a few hundred kilometers away from Sino-Philippine flashpoints in the contested South China Sea. Some of the defunct gas and oil platforms, such as the one notionally seized in the bilateral SEAL drills, have been turned into littoral monitoring stations by the Philippine Navy in its efforts to monitor Chinese forces. A flotilla of three China Coast Guard cutters sailed past El Nido last month.
China has noted expanded American-Philippine training in the region, with the National Institute for South China Sea Studies noting that Balikatan 2024’s activities went beyond Manila’s territorial waters for the first time and into areas claimed by Beijing. “This marks a major change in the geographical location of the exercise, indicating that the Philippines recklessly uses the military exercise as an opportunity to infringe on China’s territorial sovereignty in the South China Sea,” stated a blog from China Military Online.
