 Hello everyone. Half of US Army Europe, thank you for tuning in today. We're joining you from Poland's Drosko-Promorski training area. I'm Sergeant First Class Michael Garrett with the 1st Calvary Division's Public Affairs Office. Please bear with us if we experience any signal issues as we're out in a large military training area. If we do lose our signal, don't worry, we're still recording and we'll post this video once our signal returns. Additionally, we are out here during live training, so we may pause for simulated gunfire or explosions. Now we're going to kick things off by telling you about the training we've been doing during Defender Europe 20's Allied Spirit. But first I'd like to welcome Brigadier General Christopher Norrie, the commander of the 7th Army Training Command, Brigadier General Brett Sylvia, the commander of the 1st Calvary Division Forward, and Brigadier General Slava Mir Duszek, the commander of the Polish 12th Mechanized Brigade. Hello, I'm Brigadier General Chris Norrie, the commander of 7th Army Training Command. Thank you for tuning in today with us here in Poland for Defender Europe 20 Allied Spirit. Like the rest of the world, COVID-19 has shaped everything we do here in U.S. Army Europe. But our soldiers are great at adapting to every obstacle place before them just as they have for the past 245 years. No matter the challenges we face as a nation, the U.S. Army will always answer the call. Our soldiers' varying ideas, beliefs, and backgrounds help to make the Army the respected, diverse organization it is today. The U.S. Army evaluates and improves strategic readiness through multinational training exercises. In order to ensure that we, alongside our NATO allies and partners, are prepared to defend and deter adversaries, we have to train and practice complex tasks. At a certain point, we cannot simulate moving large numbers of troops and equipment. We have to do it. Defender Europe 20 was originally designed as a deployment exercise to bring large amounts of American soldiers and equipment to Europe to build strategic readiness in support of our National Defense Strategy and NATO deterrence objectives. We had already begun Defender Europe 20 deploying 20,000 soldiers to Europe to participate in linked exercises with allies and partners from 18 nations when in March we decided to modify in response to COVID-19 to ensure that the safety of our forces and host nation communities here in Europe. While many of the linked exercises were canceled, after careful assessment and planning between U.S. Army Europe and the Polish Ministry of Defense, we were able to modify exercise allied spirit. Once we were confident we could execute this training safely, given the current environment, we arrived here in Poland to go to work with our allies. Despite these adjustments, many of the strategic readiness, deployment, and military mobility objectives were met clearly demonstrating the U.S. steadfast commitment to NATO and its ability and willingness to deploy a large combat credible force to Europe to respond to crisis. In terms of what was gained, military mobility is about more than just roads and bridges. It is about exercising the processes and procedures necessary to deliver a large force from ports in the U.S. to ports in Europe and then on to a point of crisis wherever that may be across our theater. The U.S. and NATO have exercised those procedures at smaller scale over the last five years during Atlantic Resolve rotations. Defender Europe 20 provided us the opportunity to work with our allies to exercise this at a larger scale and we accomplished that. It is important that we continue such training despite any challenges. These exercises still use many of the original Defender Europe 20 training objectives to enhance our combined readiness and interoperability between U.S. allied and partner nations. And importantly, they demonstrate that NATO allies and partners stand stronger together. The U.S. commitment to NATO is ironclad and that we're able to operate and train in any environment. Thank you again for joining us. I am extremely proud to be part of the team here in Poland training alongside Polish and U.S. units that are absolutely exceptional. I'll now hand it over to Brigadier General Sylvia. Hello, everyone. My name is Brigadier General Brett Sylvia. I'm the commander of First Cavalry Division Forward. On behalf of America's First Team, let me say thank you for taking the time to check out the great things our soldiers are doing here in Europe. I'd like to start off by saying it's an absolute honor to be a guest here in Poland and to be working with the Polish Army. They are a well-led, well-equipped and well-trained force. We are proud to work side-by-side with them as our peers during this exercise. As some of you know, a Polish General, General Kazmyr Pulaski, is considered to be the father of the U.S. Calvary, fighting alongside our Army in our Revolutionary War, which, as a member of the First Cavalry Division here in Poland, on our Army's birthday makes this even more special. From the Battle of Lexington to present day, U.S. Army soldiers have answered our nation's call for 245 years. Through the Army's steadfast dedication to the mission, our core values, and enduring support to our fellow Americans, we will safeguard the hard-earned trust and confidence of the American people. This train is important for many reasons. It allows us to demonstrate to our NATO allies and to the world that we have the capability to train safely in this COVID environment. We've gone to great lengths to ensure this training event is safe not only for our soldiers but for all the people in the local area as well. As a result, 100 percent of our soldiers and civilians participating or supporting this training event have been tested and found to be COVID-free. This exercise that you're witnessing today looks different from what was originally scheduled for May. The training that's been happening here at Drasko Pomorski Training Area since June 5th is a scaled-down version of the original, which was going to have 10,000 soldiers. It's now down to 6,000 soldiers, U.S. and Polish. And yet this training remains significant and sophisticated. There's no substitute for this type of training. You cannot do it digitally. You cannot telecommute to battle. We need the forces on the ground to guarantee our combat readiness. The reception and facilitation of the onward movement of our forces requires the support and cooperation of tens of thousands of service members and civilians from across the Alliance. If the time ever comes, we will be ready to meet the call. We have the procedures and we have the relationships necessary to accomplish any mission. This training demonstrates our ability to operate as part of a multinational interoperable team, conducting one of the most complex maneuvers that any Army can attempt and oppose river crossing. With our Polish allies side by side, we bring the best of our armies together to accomplish this mission. The capabilities of the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team and the Combat Aviation Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division and the Polish 12th Mechanized Brigade greatly complement one another. We are truly stronger together. So thank you again and I'll turn it over to Brigadier General Slavomir Duczek, my good friend from the 12th Mechanized Brigade. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am Brigadier General Slavomir Duczek, commander of the 2F Mechanized Brigade. Polish soldiers from more than 20 years have been serving together with Allied troops, especially with the US Army. Defender exercise is the great possibility to increase interoperability and armed forces cooperation on tactical level. There is a strong partnership between the soldiers of 12th Mechanized Brigade and US military units built during numerous exercise and foreign missions. One of the main tactical episodes is the wet-gap crossing operation together with the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, but also many demanding and complicated tasks. They help to check the ability to cooperate within Allied operation and a series of activities coordinated on different command levels. I would like to thank the superiors that the Blue Brigade is the main Polish unit participating in this exercise. It's a great chance for 12th Brigade soldiers to get new experience and cooperation skills between our nations. Today's anniversary of 250 US Army birthday, remind a long way you had to follow to create such an efficient and strong army, which is a core of safety and peace, ready to cooperate and strengthen our partnership. Thank you for your attention and happy birthday to all US soldiers. Thank you. Thank you gentlemen. Earlier we posted a video showing two groups working as a combined team as they maneuvered across a natural terrain barrier, a river. To help us understand everything involved in this event, we have Major Rob Pugh, the First Calvary Division's lead planner for Allied Spirit. Sir, thank you for joining us today. Thank you. During this exercise, we are conducting multiple two-day iterations of the training, each time increasing the speed at which we operate in what we call a crawl-walk-run manner. The first day of each iteration focuses on establishing our forces around the crossing site, and the second day we have the crossing itself. Today, we're out here for day two of our second iteration. Sir, when we talk about the first day, we refer to it as establishing near and far side security. Could you walk us through those terms and explain how we reach that goal? Yeah, absolutely. So the effort here is to ensure the units are able to safely cross the river. It starts with the planning. We designed a plan that has used all of our available forces to control a larger perimeter around the crossing site. First, the Second Brigade, Third Infantry Division, began to attack across the battlefield. They encountered large obstacles consisting of sea wire, mines, and a tank dish that was prepared by the adversary with the intent to slow our progress. Three, six, seven armor battalion and elements of the Ninth Brigade Engineer Battalion conducted a combined arms breach of that obstacle and allowed the brigade to keep its tempo in the attack. As the Second Brigade continued their attack, we saw the opposing force moving to defend the crossing site and establish a defense beyond the natural water obstacle. Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles and Abrams Main Battle Tanks are the primary tools the brigade combat team is using in this attack. I want to say it reaches near shore. It provides suppressive fires for the crossing elements. It's important that these near side objectives closest to the river on our side are seized because this allows the brigade the ability to set conditions for our Polish allies to establish the bridge. Looks like we have some simulated enemy aircraft coming in real quick. So what you just saw was Polish MI-24 high-gun ships attacking the river crossing site, posing as enemy aircraft, attempting to disrupt the US and Polish forces as they cross the river. Now, we have videos of a lot of the training that has taken place up to this point. At various times during our live stream, we will post links in the comments below to videos that show the actions we are talking about. If you want to see video of the engineer breaching efforts that Major Pugh is just talking about, you can check out that link in the comments below. Yeah, we also had paratroopers from the Polish army, six airborne brigade conducting airborne assault into the far side of the river to disrupt the enemy and divert their attention from the water. Crossing rivers in combat is complex when bridges are intact. Building a bridge for them is even more challenging. Typically, the unit has to cross at a very specific point, leaving lots of opportunities for posing forces to target our soldiers. We integrated more Polish and US forces earlier this week when the Polish Sixth Airborne Brigade jumped into training exercise. Hundreds of paratroopers dropped from the sky and quickly assembled to disrupt the enemy on the far side of the river to give more space and time for the bridging operations. To see footage of the Polish paratroopers jump, please check out the Airborne link posted in the comments below. So now we have airborne soldiers on the far side of the river and Bradley's here on the near side, but we also have Polish units who are able to quickly cross the river in amphibious vehicles. Sir, how are our efforts tied in with them? Yeah, absolutely. So Poland's 12th Mechanized Brigade does in fact have amphibious vehicles. While our trucks and bralies have to cross the stationary erected bridge, the Polish have some vehicles that are able to cross the water without a bridge. These vehicles are able to rapidly move to the edge of the river and into the water and cross the river quickly and receive, you know, while receiving recovery fire from our bralies here on the near side. Some of the Polish vehicles are able to carry humvees or transport some of our troops across the river as well. We're able to leverage multiple means to quickly get troops and vehicles across the river, establishing security on the far side. These include one-road bridges, amphibious vehicles to transport infantry squads, our Polish teammates swimming, their fighting vehicles across, and faring operations to get the heavier vehicles across as well. Now those smaller vehicles moving rapidly across the river is something we call swim ops. You can see a video of Polish Rossamok, PTS, and VMP vehicles crossing the river by following the link we're posting in the comments now. Now sir, this all sounds like it's a very arduous task for a single unit to accomplish, much less for two separate countries, to be able to successfully complete all these training objectives together. We use the word interoperability a lot. Looks like our hind vehicles came around for another pass. We use the word interoperability a lot here as a singular term to describe how we integrate a lot of the different systems and processes with the Polish forces, but that term really refers to a lot more than that. Can you explain interoperability to our audience? Yeah, absolutely. So interoperability has kind of become a singular term for us here. You're absolutely right. It's more than just a catch-all. When you have two separate forces operating independently and near geographic areas on the battlefield, two have to stay in constant communication with each other. We've gone a step further, however. We've actually integrated our forces occupying the same space and moving together as a single team. To accomplish this, it takes a lot more than just being able to talk to each other and communicate. We have pointless liaisons in our headquarters operations center who work with us to plan missions. That helps us understand each other's tactics and helps us understand each other's capabilities. Better combined teams understand all the assets that we have at our disposal. More effective and efficient we can be in our planning efforts. In our tactical operations center we have representatives from many different elements or what we call war-fighting functions. For example, our sustainment cell keeps the entire team informed of the sustainment efforts. Our intelligence team keeps us all up to speed on what the adversary is doing. We have all these different team members integrating information sets in the group to allow us to manage all our forces effectively. We have added our Polish peers to that team. We're able to track exactly where all our allied elements are on the map in real time. We're able to take all these streams of information, you know, how we are best able to move these elements on the battlefield to reach our combined objectives. Interoperability is really about building a relationship. It's about a shared understanding and understanding that the soldiers on our left and our right, here for us that means that soldiers on our left and our right could be from Poland. We are training this way so Poland or any of our NATO allies ever needs our help. We're able to seamlessly support their efforts to defend their country. In fact, a common phrase among our Polish peers is we are stronger together. Now this training event is the first time we've ever had Bradley-Fighty vehicles crossing a Polish bridge. The more we train together the more we're able to integrate our efforts and accomplish things we haven't done before. So in terms of interoperability we continue to increase our trust and understanding of our NATO allies with each exercise. Sir, can you explain how the Polish engineers are able to build a bridge that can safely support the weight of a Bradley? Absolutely. So the bridge that our Polish partners built is remarkably strong. We can actually support the weight of three Bradley vehicles spaced out across the bridge at the same time. The bridge is built out of a series of pontoons or individual floating platforms that can be assembled together into different configurations. For the bridge they are linked together and anchored into the ground on both sides of the river allowing the vehicles to enter the bridge on one bank and exit on the opposite bank. There are boats that are essentially used as tug boats to help move those bridges into position. The engineers years are also they have the ability to link some of these platforms together in a configuration that creates a ferry that are able to push the boats. If the river were too far to bridge with the number of pontoons on hand they could cross the river using ferry configuration and it's been pretty remarkable to witness. Once all the elements reach the far side of the river they move forward and consolidate before moving onward to their next objective. Just like the efforts to arrive here and cross the river the entire endeavor is completed in concert. One integrated team moving together to complete the mission. Allied spirit is a reoccurring exercise held annually. The army rotates new units in every year to participate. Upon completion the soldiers here with the first cavalry division forward turn to Poznan for several months to serve as the division forward element for Operation Atlantic Resolve. Second Brigade is also remaining here in Poland for their deployment. This provides a constant benefit from each group building combat power and interoperability with our peers, our partners, our allies. We are in fact stronger together and that strength contributes to a stronger relationship with all of our NATO allies. Now I'd like to say a special thank you to Amy Parr, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Wiseman Captain Robin Haig and our Polish counterpart Captain Eva Zlatnicka. Without all of these people this wouldn't have been possible today. Thank you for joining us. This concludes our live stream event.