 The Golden Swordsmen of Patrol Squadron 47 joined forces with members of the Hellenic Air Force Base out of Athens, Greece for Phoenix Express 2015. The exercise tested North African, European and U.S. forces' abilities to work together to combat illegal activities and promote maritime peace in the Mediterranean Sea. Lieutenant Katie Calhoun, tactical coordinator for the flight, said language barriers can often be a struggle when working with other nations. But this year the mission was completed without any difficulty. You know, sometimes with these exercises we can have some language barrier issues but we checked in with the Greeks and were able to understand them really well and we had some systems on our airplane we were able to bring up and then they brought up on their ship as well and were able to coordinate that pretty well. The Greek and American service members worked together to patrol the waters around the exercise. Mission Commander, Lieutenant Commander Jeremy Lyon talks about why the flight was so successful for his squadron. Phoenix Express to the P3s is a good opportunity for us to work together with our partner nations and to build that theater security cooperation and really to deter sea-based threats or elicit activity in the Mediterranean Sea. Reporting from Naval Air Station Siganella, I'm Petty Officer Rebecca Sunderland.