 Hi, my name is Lieutenant Colonel David Williams and I'm here in Rovenyemi Finland today. We're participating in Arctic Challenge 2021, a multinational exercise in Finland, Norway and Sweden, working on interoperability with our mission partners, our allies, and it's great to be here. Space 21 is a multinational exercise done every two years to hone our skills of working together. It's been challenging preparing for this with the COVID. Normally we would have a lot of time to interact face to face and plan, but all the planning has been done mostly over teleconference from the United States. That's quite challenging to wake up at two and three in the morning like our main planner Captain Swenson did to be on the telecon and iron out all the details, but we've been here a week. We've been 10 for 10 on our missions so far and we're going for 20 for 20 by the end of the week. So we're on board a KC-135 strato tanker from the 459th Air Refueling Wing based at Andrews Air Force Base Maryland Joint Base Andrews. We are a reserve organized, lead and executed unit. We're here completely sustaining ourselves as a reservists. We've taken leave from our families, our professions, and we're all here voluntarily here to help the Norwegians, the Finns, and the Swedes train on air refueling. By taking off in this airplane with thousands of pounds of gas on board, we can extend their training time in the air and enhance their effectiveness in their training. It's key interoperability. When we train at home, we're most of the time refueling United States airplanes. When we come over here, we work through the language barriers and the different techniques that other countries use and through this two weeks of training together, we come together and form a more unified effort together. The Finnish Air Force came early this morning to put 120,000 pounds of fuel on this airplane and the one sitting beside me. And in about an hour, this airplane and the airplane beside us are going to go up and we're going to refuel 17 airplanes in about an hour and offload all that fuel to them. So exercises like this really enhance the proficiency of the pilots and everybody that supports the fighter pilot getting airborne and doing his mission. There's a lot of working together, overcoming language barriers and different ways of doing things so that if it came down to it and we had to put things on the line against an opponent, we could do so as one team in one fight. I've never had a chance to have sustained time on the ground here and it's been wonderful. Working with the Finns, I can honestly say at the end of this 28-year career I'm on, they have been the greatest host I've ever had at a deployed location. Very helpful. I've had a great time working with them. Their food is delicious and the scenery is awesome as well. The sun never going down, that's something I have not really experienced much before. It affects your sleep but it also is nice for the air refueling. Being able to do that in the daytime helps with the success of the mission. As a Captain Kyle Swenson, I have been the exercise planner for the 459th Air Refueling to participate in ACE 21 here at the Roving Army Finland. ACE 21, Archic Challenge, Exercise 21 is a biannual exercise held between Norway, Sweden and Finland. Absolutely, the 459th Air Refueling Wing is a complete reserve unit based out of Washington DC and we are providing fuel to the fight for the aircraft so they can enhance their training and stay on station longer to make sure their combat is capable and make sure all their training is complete before the mission is over. The Finnish Air Force, they refuel us every morning with the gas and they've been hosting us within their terminal on the buildings, providing our flight plans and helping us execute the mission every single day. It is a huge bonus to enhance our exercise, readiness throughout the entire region. We are a reserve unit and by coming out here that helps us stay sharp and really supplement the active duty forces and keep us ready and ready to fight. Finding the Arctic region provides its own challenges with the weather. It's been incredibly exciting, during the summer months it's 24 hours of sunlight so it provides a unique opportunity for pilots to be out here and experience it with our Nordic partners.