 The purpose of this exercise was to take the Marines out of a familiar training area, move them into something unfamiliar and more treacherous in West Virginia, not just in the cold weather, which we experience, but also the rough terrain, and then put them out of their comfort zone and force them to operate distributed operations, unknown area and accomplish a mission. I think the training was success in a couple different ways. First in mission accomplishment, we set out what we wanted to do, we accomplished it, but also on the small unit level, team leaders being able to control smaller element, sergeants being in charge of that. We have staff sergeant squad leaders that were operating independently, and that alone developed TTPs and SOPs within the platoon that will drive kind of the force design of where we're headed in 2030. The technical and tactical proficiency is improved in a few areas as well. Talking electronically, the equipment that we're being able to use, it's not something that typically a Lance Corporal Corporal will play with. We have internal UAS operators that are getting experience on that equipment. We have complete array of comm assets that typically is a battalion level we have at a platoon level, and then just the operating distributedly is a lot different than a company attack or a company mission where everyone's online and heading the same direction. This is all independent squad missions that we've got to operate. This exercise affects the Marine Corps as a whole in really aligning directly with the force design 2030, us being IBEX, Experimental Battalion. We are taking squad leaders, we're taking squads, we're giving them independent missions and we're having them operate on commander's intent. Taking that small unit leadership I think is a pivotal point that we need to accelerate towards. The pre-training that the unit conducted helped our success in the exercise in the matter of the unit has never operated in cold weather training, coming from Camp Lejeune. The weather does not get to extreme temperatures as it did there, you know, approaching the zeroes to teens, being able to survive, build survival shelters, learn how to walk in snowshoes, marking plans is something that we don't think about, but developing marking plans because when it snows it covers up tracks, so having a solid SOP. All that pre-training that we conducted prior to the exercise helped in the success in the actual exercise. I believe the purpose of this exercise was to take a unit in the new force design 2030 and put them in an unfamiliar environment to really test the predicted capabilities of the new squad leaders able to operate in line with other squads in the total force of a company and really push them to their limits in an unfamiliar environment and see how well they accomplished that mission. As a squad leader, it was really being able to be given a commander's intent, operate off of that and be able to make those critical decisions at a squad level and have the view of the bigger picture for how it was actually going to affect the overall operation. I think the exercise went really well with any operation, there were our friction points but overall we were able to overcome those friction points. There was a thorough understanding of the mission across the board where we were able to make those decisions and we were able to accomplish our mission effectively and while meeting our time critical task. I think this impacts the tactical proficiency of this unit by having the Staff Sergeant Squad Leaders, the real key takeaways by having Sergeant Team Leaders, I'm able to task organize in a way to affect the patrol and with task delegation where we can effectively operate even down to a team level and I can have that much more trust in my Team Leaders to accomplish their mission and I can focus on the bigger picture and sort of be the middleman between where to get the focus on the bigger mission and still at the same time make sure the squad is staying on task. I believe this affects the Marine Corps as a whole. The Marine Corps has always prided itself on our ability to operate and decentralize leadership and with Force Design 2030 there is a big emphasis on that where we are able to operate with Staff Sergeant Squad Leaders, Sergeant Team Leaders where we are able to have that much more trust in our small unit leaders and push out and extend our reach further down to those smaller units. The purpose of us going to West Virginia was to operate simulated training in a contested environment while we're doing our distributed operations as our companies were spread out throughout the full of mine over a 20,000 acre training area which allowed them the freedom of movement to make decisions on their own to be able to operate as a unit and have positive command and control and close in on objectives that they have been assigned to them. 20,000 acres of untouched training is very beneficial for the Marines. It allows for real life scenarios to happen instead of just cookie cutter training areas that Marines are used to training in. This gave the Platoon Sergeant, Platoon Commanders, Squad Leaders the freedom to be able to make decisions as they came along, as they came across the terrain that they are not used to. I believe the training is very successful. The Marines got a lot out of it. They got to train in an area that they're not used to. They were able to push themselves to their limits to see what their actual capabilities were and how they could function as a unit. The training as a whole was something that they have never been able to do before since they've been with this unit so it's all new to them. Every one of them were very challenged with the amount of weight that they were carrying, the chow that they had to bring with them to sustain them for five days and the water that they had to bring with them as well. The terrain that they walked through, steep elevations they're not used to was very challenging for them but it gave them a sense to understand what their bodies could do. It also allowed them to test out the gear that they have had issued to them in order to gain the confidence in the gear so they know exactly how to use this gear in areas of the cold weather that they're not used to. Training is very valuable to the Marine Corps as a whole. It aligns with what we're doing aligns right with force design of 2030, the Command Division for the Marine Corps, it's getting us a smaller unit, more lethal in the areas of being unpredictable. For the past 15 to 20 years we've been operating in environments where we're constantly on the roads. Our maneuverability is very predictable whenever we're in those environments that we've been operating in. With this environment right here that we're operating in, we had inserts through helicopters and it was very unpredictable. Night inserts allowed the Marines to land on the ground undetected and then the enemy has no idea or no set schedule or no specific routes that the Marines were taking. So I believe it gave us the ability to operate lighter as a Marine Corps but more efficient in being able to maintain our unpredictability on what we're going to be able to do. Inserting like this, the enemy will have no idea how many Marines landed on the ground, which direction they're going or anything like that. There's no set maneuver that the Marines of Victory 1-2 were going to be able to go. They didn't know what the objective is. The last 10, 15, 20 years it's been pretty easy to kind of predict what the Marines are going to do with the areas that we're going to go to, the avenues that we're going to take things like this. So I really think this put us at a major advantage in focusing on what the Command on is getting after the Marine Corps to do. So we know what the mission is, we know what the mission set is and we are focused and we are committed to giving this experiment that we're doing as an Ibex battalion 100% effort and see which way the Marine Corps needs to go. The purpose of this exercise is this is the third in a series of infantry live force experimentation exercises to conduct distributed operations with the new force design concept that we have in our battalion and really kind of test and experiment with it to provide data back to the service that they can make a decision going forward on force design. The exercise went very well. We were really able to get after here in West Virginia some of the things that we could do back at Camp Lejeune. So we had a little bit more space to work with, some different types of terrain with the mountains that we have around here. And then the weather here in January and February was challenging. So all of those are factors as we take a look at the physicality and the command and control difficulties that we think that will go along with future force design and future force missions. The full of training area was really exactly what we were looking for. We were looking for some additional space than what we typically have here at Camp Lejeune and then also space in the electromagnetic spectrum because of its remoteness. There's a little bit more opportunity to work in that without interfering with the local communities or just the noise and interference with the operations that we're doing. Which is really all important is things that we're testing as part of force design. The Marines did very well in a new environment. We talked about the battalion before we deployed up there that is right in the him every climb in place. So we train in every climb in place and to include experiment in every climb in place. So a lot of the things that we're doing with force design, we got to make sure that we could do it not just in the flat terrain at Camp Lejeune but in the mountains. We could do it in the weather. We could do it in the snow. We could do it in multiple locations. So that's part of the experiments that we've been doing up to this point and that we will continue to do going forward. So I think the training that we did at Camp Dawson in West Virginia before going into the separate training location at the full of mine really kind of prepared us to operate in that different environment. It gave us a little bit of a taste to see what worked and what didn't work before they actually went into the operation and part of the experiment. So there was some refinement that happened there. There was some training that prepared the Marines to operate in that environment. We saw the results when we got there at full on. Any training that you could do is going to train and better prepare you technically and tactically. So when you do the things that you don't normally get to do, it just increases that base a little bit more. And that's really what we were able to get after during this exercise. As part of life force experimentation for part of force design is it provides data to the service for them to make a decision. So we worked closely with the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab. They collected the data that were there to observe the experiment. And they take that data and then kind of provide it to the service so we can get refinement on force design going forward.