 Exercises like Winter Shield are a great opportunity for our nations to work together to share our knowledge and expertise and a tactical environment. Training like this at the small unit tactical level is important for soldiers at the lowest level to learn how our NATO allies work, especially in a complex environment. Learning how they operate and them learning how we operate is incredibly important when we get out there and start doing larger scale missions. The purpose of Exercise Winter Shield is to build on our operability with our NATO allies. The strength of our alliance is our ability to work together and fight together and win. Exercise Winter Shield is essential to do that. We're working with the Latvians, the Spanish and several other NATO partners to ensure that we're able to accomplish a task and accomplish a mission that we may have to do if we do have to fight. I'm very proud of my soldiers and also their willingness to learn and work with these NATO allies and also all the experience and assistance that we've gotten from the Latvians and the Spanish. It's truly a great teamwork and team building exercise between all the NATO allies.