 USS Freedom departed Naval Base San Diego March 1st as the first littoral combat ship to deploy. Before deploying the ship underwent maintenance and its crew held training and briefings to prepare for the deployment. Here is like everybody wants to go and it's I've never seen from a simple pre-deployment brief be so we had a pre-deployment brief and I've never seen it so full I know it's only 40 of us but the full 40 crew members plus spouses plus children were all there and they were very attentive and I was like pretty amazed at that just that that that night I was like wow majority of time I hear people like oh my god complaining and all this other stuff but no everybody was just like supportive of that from families to the personnel they were like great and they you know they wanted again even to family members they want this program succeed. Freedom also conducted sea trials in the weeks leading up to the deployment to test the capabilities of the ship and its systems. The vast mission capabilities of the LCS platform require Freedom's 53-person crew to be flexible and versatile in their duties and skill sets. So that means we have to like the firefighting deploying boats we have to have a broader knowledge of all the aspects of the ship and be able to conduct more operations than on a legacy ship who has certain crew members that will just do flight quarters who will just do boat evolutions. Our entire crew has to do everything. USS Freedom is deploying to Singapore on a rotational basis as part of the United States commitment to the security and stability of the Asia-Pacific region from the defense media activity and petty officer Amara Timberlake.