 Marines and Soldiers conducted a combined live-fire mortar training exercise at Artar Range in Djibouti recently. The sustainment training provided the U.S. Marines assigned to the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, Battalion Landing Team 1-4 mortar platoon, and Soldiers with the 163rd Combined Arms Battalion mortar platoon, an opportunity to enhance their indirect fire support skills. So today we're conducting training to enhance our ability for fire support. We're increasing our proficiency and maintaining our proficiency so that we can provide fire support for maneuver elements. We've been able to take a lot of the tactics, techniques and procedures from the U.S. Army's 120 system, implement that into our system to increase our timeliness and accurate predictive fire. Our interoperability with the U.S. Army is the greatest benefit that we've had working in Djibouti. Through the combined efforts of the Forward Observers in the Fire Direction Center, or FDC, service members' key knowledge required to put rounds on target at a moment's notice. Throughout this training I have learned many things. I've learned how the Marines' 120 millimeter mortars work. This is actually the first time I get to see them in action. I get to see how their FDC works in hand-in-hand with ours. Just how quickly we can get fires on the targets whenever we're working together. The Mortarmen fired more than 2,000 rounds throughout this three-day training, while honing their skills and improving their tactics and techniques to ensure readiness for future combat missions. For Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa Public Affairs, I'm Staff Sergeant Antoinette Gibson.