The Naval Special Warfare Command — universally known as the Royal Thai Navy SEALs — is Thailand's premier special operations unit, raised in 1956 as the Underwater Demolition Assault Unit with American help and modelled closely on the US Navy's own SEAL teams, with which it still trains every year.
Selection runs the better part of a year and routinely washes out four of every five candidates. Those who finish are combat divers first: beach reconnaissance, underwater demolition, ship boarding and maritime counter-terrorism, with a smaller element held at readiness for hostage rescue.
The world met them in June 2018, when a monsoon trapped a junior football team six kilometres inside the flooded Tham Luang cave. Thai SEALs and foreign cave divers spent eighteen days getting all twelve boys and their coach out alive — a rescue that cost the life of former SEAL Saman Kunan, and later that of Beirut Pakbara, both of whom the unit lost to the operation.
