00:04My name is 1st Lieutenant Blackington, I work in the S3 operations shop as an operations
00:10officer at 5-5 Air Defense Artillery.
00:13The mission readiness exercise is a culminating training event where it takes all of our training
00:18throughout the entire year, combines it into a validation and readiness exercise.
00:24Basically, what that looks like is you have all your soldiers doing their combat jobs,
00:30their combat roles, and they are training against live rounds and shooting live rounds.
00:35The primary training audience consists of the EOC, or Engagement Operation Cell crews,
00:40and the gun crews.
00:42The gun crews are responsible for making sure that their weapons system is up and ready to
00:46go at all times, troubleshooting if there's problems, and sending up engagement reports
00:51to our EOCs, where you have your battle captain, battle NCO, who direct the battle with their
00:59air picture.
01:00And from utilizing their knowledge of the air picture in the battle space, they're able
01:05to shoot down incoming threats and send orders out to the rest of the base.
01:11So they control a pretty key component of the air defense posture, the air defense readiness,
01:17when it comes to actively conducting the battle rules.
01:21One of the things that I've learned throughout my time in 5-5 and 31st Brigade is you never
01:27quit, you never stop going.
01:29There's times that get really, really challenging, both in garrison and downrange, and the key
01:34is never giving up.
01:35You're going to be relied on in a fight that is far bigger than you can realize, and it's
01:40super, super important that you just never quit.
01:43You always seek to get better, and you always seek to improve.
01:47Thank you very much.
01:47You always want to use one moi in the right direction.
01:49While creating a 77-ruck tube, you're going to be relied on at 116 ft, 168 ft, 168 ft, 16,
01:49a table as well as I tell as the heavens.
