 The U.S. Airmen from the 140th Wing, Colorado Air National Guard, attend the Checkered Flag exercise at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida. The Checkered Flag, hosted by the 325th Fighter Wing, is one of the DoD's largest air-to-air exercises and is designed to integrate four TH and fifth-generation airframes to enhance mobility and employment capabilities of aviators and maintainers. Over 190 folks down to Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida to participate in the Checkered Flag exercise. Almost half of those personnel are drill status gardening. Those individuals that drill usually one week in a month at about two weeks of each year. So we do a morning go where we have a massive war, if you will, very red-flag-ish, if you'd like, and then in the afternoons we'll do missile shoots against drones and some other pre-coordinated assets they'll have out there over the ocean. Those folks integrated in with the full-time teams, numerous different active duty teams from Nellis, Langley, we actually even have Australian counterparts down here this week, are really allowing us to do one thing. It's to integrate the fourth and fifth-generation fighters to make sure that we can do air-to-air combat, load the missiles, add the ammunition, check the jets, launch the jets, recover the jets. Almost every single day we've actually been sending up six jets every morning and then another six jets in the afternoon. A significant amount of just on-hand, like hands-on value-added training for all of those individuals integrating in with a full team and testing some of the newest missiles in the Air Force inventory. That integration of the two fourth gen to fifth gen and the way that the jets talk and the way the tactics work between the next level, next generation of fighters and what we have been doing against a China and a Russia of the past, that takes some work and some practice for the pilots to go out there and fight against some sort of a threat as those partner nations also get F-35s. That discussion has to happen airborne as well, not only internally to the Air Force, but also with our partner nations as well. Looking at what the future fight will be and if we look at our airmen, if we look specifically at our pilots, it's been really interesting to get the back grease every day and see how well they're doing against an F-22 or an F-35. We really have an amazing team that can get up there and go to air-to-air combat with them. If indeed that day comes and we have to go to war with a near-peer adversary, that is what this event is created to start practicing against, frankly. We go to war with what we got and right now what we've got is a bunch of fourth-gen fighters, particularly in the F-16 and the F-15 world. Our planes are getting older. The amount of time that we see our maintainers on the runway every day compared to the maintainers, say, for the F-22s is significant. We have to have a lot more folks out there and put a lot more hours into getting these planes ready to fight every single day. It really builds on the need for the Colorado Air National Guard to modernize its fleet, preferably into one of these fifth generation fighters. Not only for saving of maintenance, but to make sure that we are staying on the leading edge of what we can bring to the fight wherever that fight may be in the future. If we do have to take these jets to war in a China-type scenario, there will be a lot of missiles coming off the jet. We have not shot a lot of missiles in a global war and terror fight over the better part of 20 years. So you have to continue to make sure the jets are able to actually fire missiles if indeed we are sending signals to do so, and this is the opportunity to do that. You know, as I walked around and met the troops this morning, it's great to see them. My first question is, who's a part-timer here, right? Because those folks don't get the hacks that everybody does on a day-in-day-out. They're full-timers there. It's a part-time structured force in the Guard. It's our full-timers job to prepare our part-timers that if we do end up going to war, that they're ready to do that and be the most expert they possibly can in their mission set. For example, we have one gentleman. He's a surgeon. He literally comes to drill and loses money every single day that he comes to serve. Why? Because he wants to serve his nation and his state. Other individuals who are instructors, they're teachers downtown, they're school administrators. One of the things, the most significant things in the Air Force right now is making sure that we have personnel that if we were to go to an island hopping or something like that, that they are multi-capable in the skills and tasks that they do. This before is an opportunity to do so, right? And it affords them to do it with our partners in the fifth-gen world so they can kind of see how they operate with the expectation that we will fleet up and get an F-35 and Buckley as well some day. Individuals are giving up multiple weeks of their time or their personal career to come down here and do this training. We have individuals that work on the engines, that work on the electronics personnel that do intel and personnel that actually fly the jets. The other day we had an all-call, we were able to highlight some of our superior performers from this exercise. And the one thing that stuck out and a lot of people commented on it was that everybody had almost talked to every single other person in the organization when we kind of came together to conclude the mission down here. It really goes to show that we are truly one team working towards the collective fight.