 Colonel Dave Banning, commanding officer of Marine Rotational Force, Darwin. Okay, well, exercises with allies and partners are really important for a variety of reasons. If you look at the fundamental strategic level, these exercises and these kinds of deployments demonstrate a fundamental strategic alignment between our countries that I think is really, really important. Operationally, they demonstrate the Marine Corps' mobility and flexibility. So if you think about MRF-D, where we're able to literally take units from across the Pacific, move them in short order down to the other side of the world, and nearly instantly start conducting tactical operations with a bilateral partner, that's something that I think is really hard to overstate the importance of. And then at the tactical level, these kinds of deployments allow us to work very closely with bilateral partners and really hone our tactical capability for the kinds of potential crisis and contingencies that we might be called upon to respond to. Well, I think the highlight of the deployment for me personally, in terms of working with partner nations and particularly the Austrians, is the fact that this allows us as Marines to add to that legacy, that rich history that we share with not only the Australian military, but Australia as a whole. And if you think about the contribution and how important Australia's role was during World War II, the fact that we are able to add to that legacy in some small part I think is very meaningful for me. I think that language barriers can sometimes get a lot of attention just because it's a very visible aspect of working with partners and allies, but I think the fundamental thing to remember is that tactics is a pretty universal language and if you have a good grasp of operational terms and graphics, that you can actually communicate a lot on a map with a piece of acetate, with a partner nation, even if they don't speak a word of English. And then after briefing that concept on the map, being able to sit around a terrain model and run through how an operation is going to unfold, and then actually go out and conduct those rehearsals, it really mitigates a lot of the potential confusion that could arise. So really it's just executing the fundamental things that we would do with our own units anyways, but the importance in working with a partner nation is just a little bit more pronounced. And then if you think about it in terms of the institution, the Marine Corps clearly understands how important it is for us to be able to operate with partner nations, and so we have people that go to Defense Language Institute. We ask Marines to self-declare their own language capability so that if we wind up in a situation where we need to be able to communicate with a partner force, we can very quickly and find or very quickly search for and find those Marines within the force that can facilitate that communication. Well, absolutely, and I think it just underscores the importance of education as an investment because there's no way to map out what we are going to require in the future. We can look at the potential things that we might be called upon to face, and education, particularly in terms of language capability, is one of those investments against uncertainty in the future that provides a built-in level of flexibility that we would not have otherwise. You know, that's I think a really important question because looking at a map from Okinawa, it might not be readily apparent how MRF-D actually is directly connected to 3MAP or how it contributes to the fight now and the MAP stability to fight now. But I would say I would offer, if you look at maybe a little bit bigger picture, I think it becomes more apparent how MRF-D is directly connected to that. And going back to the discussion point about strategic alignment, you know, that strategic alignment that MRF-D demonstrates with Australia, that deterrent effect buys the MEPH time because any opportunistic regional country that might be looking for gaps in alignment between countries will look at what MRF-D demonstrates between the U.S. and Australia and realize that today's not the day for that strategic gap. Operationally, MRF-D allows the MEPH to spread the field, so to speak, where we don't have our forces concentrated in Okinawa or on Hawaii, but instead now we have forces and a sizable force literally on the other side of the world that now complicates, intelligence collection complicates the range of potential options that the MEPH has. And then tactically, our access to world-class training areas here in Australia and our proximity to our Australian counterparts allows us to get out in the training areas and hone our unit's smaller unit tactical capability to a razor's edge. So I think at all levels, MRF-D very directly contributes to 3MEPH's ability to fight now and is an important contributor to regional stability. The benefits that we get from working with the Australians, I think, are many. And again, looking at the basic unit proficiency, tactical work is hard. The fundamentals of tactical excellence require a lot of constant work and so the ability for us to get out into the training area frequently and to work with a partner nation force as capable as the ADF is allows us to see how they approach problem set maybe a little bit differently than we do. We're working in a very different climate than units face in the United States and so it forces us to kind of get out of our comfort zone, both physically and in a mental headspace, frame of reference, I think. And that broadens our experience base and broadens the different areas in which we apply these tactical decision-making principles. If you look at what we should take away out of this deployment and you can certainly take away tactical lessons. You can certainly take away planning lessons. I think that the most important lesson or point that's reinforced for me is how important allies and partners are because if you look at America's history, we normally fight as a coalition. It's a very lonely place to be on a battlefield by yourself and I think that being able to operate with a partner nation, particularly a partner nation force that we share as long and storied history as we do with the Australians, is incredibly important, one that we can't take for granted and one that we have to constantly maintain. Well, I think that the U.S. relationship with Australia is unique and if you look at the fact that this year is the 70th anniversary of the ANZUS Treaty between U.S., New Zealand and Australia and that treaty alliance forms the foundation for our partnership even today and the fact that the Australian military has fought alongside us in every major war since World War II and we fought together even before that in World War I, I think that long history demonstrates the importance that both nations place on this relationship and it serves I think not only as an example but as a foundation for peace and stability in the Pacific and while we might fight in other places, we have shown that the ability to fight from Australia is something that we've used to contain regional aggression in the past and that we are certainly capable of using to contain regional aggression in the present and future as well.