 The Mississippi National Guard on the commander of the 185th Expeditionary Combat Aviation Brigade. Alright, so what's going on with Southern Strike? Southern Strike is a joint, multinational exercise hosted by the Mississippi National Guard. We're in this training center in Gulfville, Mississippi with over 2,000 service members across all branches. We're conducting a full spectrum of operations, including counter-interancy operations, special forces operations, and conventional operations. So what's going on specifically here? So here at the combat readiness training center, we focus on aviation operations, both Air Force and Army rotary wing and fixed wing operations. We also have operations that take place across three states at different training facilities, including Camp Shelby, already enabled air station. Camp Shelby, we're focused on our special forces, operational forces, conducting both close air support, air interdiction, and ground operations. So what training is going on this year that maybe hasn't been done before? So one of the things that we're really excited about this year that we have not practiced in previous years is a new Air Force concept. Referred to as Agile, our contingency response forces deploy to an austere environment, set up operations and allow our combat and mobility Air Forces to exercise and operate there and then return to a more stable, safe environment. If I had a unit and was interested in coming to Southern Strike, why, what would be the benefit of training here to bringing my group or my wing to come to Southern Strike? So we're customer service focused. We have customers here, we ask them what they want to do, what their training objectives are, and then we take the resources that are available to make sure that we accommodate their training objectives. We've done this, this is now our 11th year that we've done Southern Strike. We continue to increase our customer base and the participants that come down here to train. And I think again, based on our customer focus, based on our customer service focus, units like to come down here and the Southern Strike framework. Talk about the community here. So Gulfport's a destination location. I think that's another reason why our participants like to come down here. We absolutely want our participants to focus on their training, but we also want them to get out there and enjoy and appreciate the fabulous Gulf Coast community that we have here. There's lots to do on your off time. So highly encourage our participants to take advantage of the beautiful community of Gulfport and the rest of the towns on the Gulf Coast. We're really excited about the fact that we always have a really good representation from the states across the 54. This year we have over 20 states participating in two countries. The Uzbekistan delegation, we've also got delegation from the Czech Republic. We're also excited about the fact that we work across the components. We have elements and service members and units, National Guard and the Reserve to work towards collective success. So the Uzbekistan's are our state partnership. Can you talk about why it's important that they keep coming back here to bolster that partnership? The Uzbekistan partnership is a really, really important partnership. They come here, we go over there on key-liter exchanges to continue to develop what might be the most important objective is that that's a relationship. We've got a really significant relationship with them and we want to continue. So they come over here, they have a great opportunity to train under the southern strike well and so we want to continue to foster that relationship. How's it been being an exercise director so far? It's been a blast. I've had a great time. This is day two. We'll see how it goes, but great experience. I'm looking forward to getting out there and seeing all the training, but really good. Do you look to get from this training? Yes, so one of the primary training objectives is the relationship that we are going to improve and develop across the joint spectrum between the Navy, Air Force Army and the Marines. Both the Reserve components, National Guard and the active component. Through this southern strike exercise, we strengthen those relationships which means that we will be successful later on as we go out and fight with our nation's wars.