 General of US Army Europe. I'd like to thank you all for attending today. We're very proud of what is occurring today with the deployment of the Flirbergate Combat Team 4th Infantry Division, which as General Ray said is the visible sign of the continued US commitment to peace and security and prosperity on the continent of Europe. What is significant about this deployment is this brigade combat team is bringing all their equipment from the states. It is enabling us to build additional readiness within the United States Army and also readiness within our NATO allies. By bringing their equipment from home station you're able to see the complexity of this operation. The ships on both sides of us were able to exercise the strategic lines of community communication. We're able to exercise all that it takes working with their allies to have freedom of movement and speed of assembly so we can move where needed to ensure we are ready to maintain the peace and deter any potential adversaries. At this time I'd like to introduce Major General Wayne Gamble from the 21st Theater Sustainment Command, which is truly the brains behind this complex logistical operation. My name is Major General Wayne Gamble. I'm the commanding general of the 21st Theater Sustainment Command. We're headquartered in Kaiserslautern, Germany. It's our mission to receive stage of an onward move, this brigade, from the Port of Bremmerhaven to Poland, where it will prepare to exercise and conduct operations with our NATO allies. We'll do this over a 10-day period. Currently we're on the morning of day three. We'll do first the deployment started at home station on three vessels, two of which you see here docked at the port. The first vessel has already been downloaded and has departed the station. We'll move them forward from this location via rail and convoy while the soldiers fly from home station direct into Poland to prepare to receive this equipment where the unit will then prepare to configure its equipment for training and exercises across Eastern Europe. We'll have a convoy as well that will traverse Germany. That convoy will leave tomorrow and those soldiers will operate their vehicles across Germany and into Poland to link up with their parents per day. The last piece is we couldn't do this without our allies, our host nation, Germany that enables everything the US Army does in Europe. Germany is our center of gravity in Europe and our great alliance and our great allies in Germany for the past 70 years have been able to include the city of Bremen to facilitate our operation with this incredible capability at the port of Bremerhaven. With that I would like to introduce one of my allies, the commander of the German logistics command. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. I'm Brehdeer General of Inflat-Simmer Commandant of the German Armed Forces Logistics School and with that school we are belonging to the Joint Support Service and with the Joint Support Service we are happy to give support to our American allies for that very important exercise and operation here in Germany towards Poland so towards the east flank of the NATO. We are serving the Americans by providing movement control, military policemen as well as logistical support also in my school in Garstedt. There we house right at the moment around about 400 American soldiers plus 600 vehicles. Thank you very much. Okay ladies and gentlemen with that I'll open the floor to questions. Yes. Hello, hi, my name is Jerof Kodakian from Polish Public Television. I have questions to turn our way. Can you tell us how many European soldiers have already come? Can you go to the microphone please? As we said earlier that this is continued effort so we have a great deal of effort going on all over Europe from the maritime special operations. This particular operation we follow very closely by Just to add upon what General Ray said, this is Huletope which means before this brigade redeploys another Armored Brigade Combat Team from the United States will deploy with all their equipment. So once again we're getting additional repetition in so we can learn. It's been fantastic on already we're doing what we call after action reviews in which we're able with our allies to talk through how could we do this even quicker in the future. So I think that's significant that what that Huletope aspect is before they depart another unit will come and we're going to make sure we are learning and so every day we're conducting hot washes so we can determine once again how do we do this even quicker in the future. So reference your question on what the brigade will be doing. Initially they will be assembling in Poland they will be going through in tactical assembly areas activities to make sure they are are ready to fight and that means they're able to shoot move and communicate. They'll also go into a training some training exercises with the Poleshaw Forces and then the brigade will move out to locations from Estonia down to Bulgaria and Romania and then during the course of their 9 month deployment will bring once again mass the brigade together so they can practice once again the speed of assembly and exercising the criticality of freedom of movement. But throughout their nine months one of the great things about deploying state forces from the United States is they're going to be able to work hand-in-hand with their our allies throughout NATO so both from the Polish armed forces but also here in Germany throughout the Baltics and also the Black Sea so we're very excited. So it's first but not the last rotation. Right now it is heel to toe. Yes. Yeah in terms of the scope of the like we have not had deployments of armor brigades in the last couple years this is the third armor brigade to deploy but the significance of this is they are bringing all their equipment from the United States and that is a commitment in showing the resolve of the American people and the commitment to the alliance to bring their equipment is able to exercise the strategic lines of communication. So you know this unit and now it would like to introduce Colonel Chris Norrie who is the brigade commander who will be heading to Poland but this unit had an extensive train up in the United States they spent a month at our National Training Center once again building their combat readiness and then they went back to home the station in Fort Tarsen Colorado got all their equipment on rail moving to the port of Beaumont loaded the three ships that you see here at the port and then now we're going through the same process getting out to Poland so that degree of complexity is one that we have not done in Europe here for quite a while but does show the global interests of the United States and we are similarly having brigades doing similar deployments to Korea throughout the Pacific so this is once again building readiness of the United States Army the joint within the United States but also our allies and partners here within the United States. Talk about how this force is just part of in response to the new security environment. At the same time we've heard a lot of criticism from Moscow, this escalation, this is a provocation. Is there concern it could go the other way that this could increase tensions? I believe that the story started back and 2014 time frame back in the February-March time frame it was then that the U.S. and European leaders met in Warsaw and discussed what to do about that particularly. Back then they decided it was time to invest and the United States is investing. So this is the continuation of a plan that stemmed like this a very important rotational presence a very clear signal it's an increased exercise capacity at focus it is spending time and energy with key partners it's an investment in the infrastructure to go and make sure that we can return and of course here so it's clearly in response to over aggression this is a methodical effort on the part of the allies to go and say to all those who would threaten peace and security. Next. I'm very proud that we're a member of NATO and I'm proud of our commitment for 70 years to peace and stability here in Europe but this unit has recently been focused on the Middle East they just got back from the National Training Center which is in Fort Irwin California and Fort Irwin California for any of you who have been there I believe there is three trees in the entire training area so it's in the middle of the Mojave Desert and so why tan one that's optimized for training at the National Training Center we have not had time to paint them so it was a conscious decision because of their training path and the need to get them here as scheduled in January that part of it is just do not have time to paint them green. I have time for one more question. It's a big logistical effort that's going on. People learn so far in this early stage their lessons learned, hiccups along. Thanks thanks for your question so in terms of what we've learned it starts with our plan our plan was to take an end to end all the speed of response or the speed of assembly as we call it starting at home station. So each of these vehicles as you see in the right here in the court they're lined up by train and we knew what train they were had they were going on or where they were going on by train load or how to facilitate Colonel Norrie's build of combat power in the assembly area so we've set a very aggressive very high bar for ourselves in terms of the speed so what we've learned so far is the transition from ship the ground and the ground to rail you know there there's some friction points in there we've been able to work our way through those friction points we've learned that best practice is this end-to-end view understanding how the force will be employed and have that extend all the way back to home station and how the ships are loaded the stoke plan the stoke plan reflects how we see how we envision and point the force in this case into a training exercise and we've also learned that weather has an impact we had freezing rain and ice over the last 24 hours we've factored in time to react to that and so far our plan is going quite well I think in terms of speed in the future the second part of your question is to identify those best practices codify them and use them for future deployments I think one lesson learned so far is that maybe the the the parts of the first train which by the way is halfway across Germany now headed to Poland maybe we delay the loading of that first train by a couple hours because we found ourselves and we planned it this way that we're literally downloading the first ship and right into the first train so the precision in that took a lot of planning it frankly worked fairly well but I'm not sure that's sustainable for brigade after brigade after brigade so we have to decide if we take a little bit deliberate approach in the front end of the future to get to maintain momentum throughout the operation we'll be 37 trains leaving here and Herndon honey over the next 10 days two of them have departed Bremmerhaven already two more will depart tonight and we'll have that same kind of rhythm over the course of the next 10 days it's 24-hour operations soldiers are operating in pretty tough conditions but we've been able to work our way through that and the soldiers are doing tremendous keeping the mission as long as as well as our civilian partners you know the rail company that supports us the stevedores here that are supporting us everybody's been able to accomplish the mission despite some challenging weather effects despite 24-hour operations and so you know I'm pretty proud frankly