The Operational Contract Support Joint Exercise, formerly called the Joint Contracting Readiness Exercise, has evolved and grown throughout the years, and OCSJX-14 is the largest to date.

With sponsorship from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, this year's exercise has brought more than 530 Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines from around the world to the state-of-the-art facilities at Fort Bliss, Texas to practice their craft as operational contracting support specialists and train on basic military tasks in a joint environment. There were even British, Canadian and French participants.

Also in attendance were professional civilians of industry and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

One of the units with the largest participation was U.S. Northern Command, who provide Department of Defense homeland defense efforts and coordinates defense support of civil authorities. They sent 43 service members from places such as Colorado Springs, Colo.; San Antonio; and Washington, D.C.

Besides Army North, which falls under NORTHCOM, the largest number of participants from the Army came from the Army Corps of Engineers, which provides environmental sustainability and maintains America's infrastructure by providing military facilities where service members train, work and live.

Their 30 Soldiers hailed from locations such as Winchester, Va.; Fort Worth, Texas; Washington, D.C.; Louisville, Ky.; Sacramento, Ca.; New York City; Savannah, Ga.; and Los Angeles, just to name a few.
The Air Force also had a strong showing of 138 Airmen, with each of their major commands from across the globe represented at OCSJX-14. The commands were Air Combat Command, Pacific Air Forces, United States Air Forces in Europe, Air Force Special Operations Command, Air Education and Training Command, Air Mobility Command, Air Force Global Strike Command, Air Force Materiel Command, Air Force Space Command, Air Force Installation Contracting Agency and the Air National Guard.

The Navy and Marines may not have had a gigantic presence with nine and eight individuals present respectively, but their diversity more than made up for their lack of numbers. Of the 17 Sailors and Marines, 14 of them were from different locations such as Japan; El Paso, Texas; San Diego and Orlando, Fla.

With all of these different people from such a variety of places, it is easy to see how joint training benefits the participants of OCSJX-14. Planning for OCSJX-15 and -16 has already begun.