BURGAS, Bulgaria -Soldiers from the 1st Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment, the 571st Movement Control Team, the 103rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command, and the 839th Transportation Battalion, Surface Deployment & Distribution Command, worked together to load a ship with vehicles belonging to the 1st Squadron, 2nd Cav. Regt. at Burgas, Bulgaria on July 25, 2017.
The 2nd Cav. Regt. just finished their part in Saber Guardian and are on their way to participate in Exercise Noble Partner. Moving this many vehicles is no easy task and involved many different moving components.
Robert Setaro, transportation planner with 839th SDDC, explained why the movement was hard to accomplish.
"The 2nd Cav. Regt. just finished Saber Guardian, so that makes this move a little challenging, because we have a very tight time window to get them from exercise to exercise," he said.
Noble Partner is a training exercise led by US Army Europe, hosted by the country of Georgia. The mission is to support the training, evaluation and eventual certification of Georgia's second light infantry company contribution to the NATO Response Force. Although the country of Georgia is not a member of NATO, it and other NATO partners voluntarily contribute to the NRF.
The planning for an operation like this took months of working together, and in the end it was put together by a multinational team.
2nd Lt. Paige Wright, movement control officer with the 571st MCT from Fort Hood, TX, described the personnel needed to accomplish this mission.
"It's a lot of coordination between us, the 103rd ESC, and the SDDC stationed in Greece, because we're all working in different countries along with learning everything from the Cav. Regt.'s movement team," she said.
The vehicles involved consisted of variations of Humvees, and M1126 Strykers. For the overall deployment of the 2nd Cav. Regt. they had approximately 800 vehicles moved overseas.
By the time the ship needed to be loaded, the hardest work had been done, and it was all thanks to the planning and cooperation of these four teams. In the end it was a testament to teamwork, according to Setaro.
"Big picture, I think it's pretty neat to see 30 Strykers rolling down the streets of Bulgaria, getting onto a partner vessel and crossing the Black Sea to promote stability in the Black Sea Region," he said.
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