 Exercise Cutlass Express 2013 comes to a close in the East African region. Participants work through scenarios mirroring real-world operations while building maritime security, partnerships, and regional stability. This exercise brought together 13 nations across four locations. The benefit we had was getting everyone to work together and to see each other's best practices and to get to share information. So I think from a lessons learned perspective, getting the cooperation and the coordination across multiple sites, and getting the teams together down to the boarding crews, the captains, the ship's crew, and all the evaluators, and getting to share both professionally and personally after the exercise was amazing and I think it'll make the region stronger. As this year's exercise wraps up, next year's planning phase is just beginning. There's a lot of momentum coming out of this and I think probably in 2014 we'll see a more sophisticated, more dynamic scenario with probably a similar number of players, but challenging the boarding crews, challenging the team, challenging things to make sure that we exercise the full system across multiple locations again. Petty Officer Darby Ortega, Port Victoria, Seychelles.