WEBVTT

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(crowd murmuring)

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- For this job, it was pretty short today,

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just a couple hours, but
we got to work alongside

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with the British air team
and got to have a couple

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conversations with them,
awesome, awesome guys.

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British are always great guys.

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I was scratched from a jump in July,

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so it was my redemption to
try and get the wings again.

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It was awesome, awesome timing,

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last jump of the brigade,
and I totally jumped

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with the Britishes.

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It was all around just awesome.

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- So this is part of our drive towards

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bonds of friendship.

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This is all about
high-readiness forces, so

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173rd Brigade being a fairly
niche brigade in the U.S. Army,

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very similar to 16 Brigade.

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Got excellent bonds with 82nd Airborne,

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as well as the 173rd, and
we've been working this through

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for the last couple of years.

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In particular, the last year,
we've been strengthening

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our interoperability as far
as airborne operations go,

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and that's worked predominantly
out of Aviano Air Base

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with the 173rd conducting
large-scale airborne operations.

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Part of the process that we enjoy the most

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is ensuring that the U.K.
jumpers that are out here

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as part of the Wings Exchange
Interoperability Program

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that we've got going on

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is it's showing that
they actually understand

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the difference between
American and English,

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that they actually are ready
to perform their drills,

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and we've noticed everything
from German paratroopers,

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Italian paratroopers we
had in our stick today.

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I think it's really, really quite neat

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that the guys are now out here,

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and learning to jump
off each other's systems

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but also meeting each other and realizing

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that they're actually
very similar in mentality

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as airborne troops with
the desire being that

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this subject matter
expertise is cross-pollinated

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so that we have U.S. jumpers
jumping our low-level

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parachute, and us, as Brits,
come out and jump a T-11.

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Should we be asked to go to war together,

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that that knowledge and that
experience is spread across.