 and the Mississippi National Guard on the Expeditionary Combat Aviation Brigade. Southern Strike is a joint multinational exercise hosted by the Mississippi National Guard. Right here in the Combat and Readiness Training Center in Gulfville, Mississippi, with over 2,000 service members across all branches, we're conducting a full spectrum of operations, including counterinsurgency, special forces operations, and conventional operations. So here at the Combat and 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 and conventional forces, conducting both close air, support, air interdiction, and ground operations. So one of the things that we're really excited about this year that we have not practiced previous years is a new Air Force concept, referred to as agile as 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. 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. Based on our customer service focus, units like to come down here and Southern Strike. Towards 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 had these 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 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 representing both active duty, national guard, and the reserve component, collective success. The Uzbekistan partnership is a really, really important partnership. They come here, leader 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 to do 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. 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. I'm excited to be here. 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. 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.