00:041st Lieutenant Blackington
00:05My name is 1st Lieutenant Blackington.
00:07I work in the S3 Operations Shop as an Operations Officer
00:10at 5.5 Air Defense Artillery.
00:13The Mission Readiness Exercise
00:14is a culminating training event
00:17where it takes all of our training
00:18throughout the entire year,
00:20combines it into a validation and readiness exercise.
00:24Basically what that looks like
00:26is you have all your soldiers
00:27doing their combat jobs, their combat roles,
00:31and their training against live rounds
00:33and shooting live rounds.
00:34The primary training audience consists of
00:37the EOC, or Engagement Operation Cell crews,
00:40and the gun crews.
00:42The gun crews are responsible for making sure
00:44that their weapons system is up and ready to go at all times,
00:47troubleshooting if there's problems,
00:49and sending up engagement reports to our EOCs.
00:52Where you have your battle captain, battle NCO,
00:55to direct the battle with their air picture.
01:00And from utilizing their knowledge of the air picture
01:04in the battle space,
01:05they're able to shoot down incoming threats
01:07and send orders out to the rest of the base.
01:11So they control a pretty key component
01:14of the air defense posture, the air defense readiness,
01:17when it comes to actively conducting the battle roles.
01:20One of the things that I've learned throughout my time
01:24in 5-5 and 31st Brigade is you never quit,
01:28you never stop going.
01:29There's times that get really, really challenging,
01:31both in garrison and downrange,
01:33and the key is never giving up.
01:35You're going to be relied on in a fight
01:38that is far bigger than you can realize,
01:40and it's super, super important that you just never quit.
01:43You always seek to get better, you always seek to improve.