JACKSON, Miss– It’s the annual Southern Strikes military training exercise. It’s all hands on deck for lots of work and training, but there’s a little play in there, too.
It’s almost everyone that fights for your country, coming together in Gulfport, Mississippi.
” Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, FBI, Guard Reserve, Active Duties, and Special Forces and Conventional Forces,” says Colonel Craig Ziamba, Exercise Director for Southern Strike, “it gives us the opportunity to train how we fight.”
That means ground to air missions, in-air combat, water war games, and using strategies together to take down the enemy and preserve the safety of home.
“We’ve dividing the coasts of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi into three countries,” says Colonel Ziamba. But this is where the fun of it all starts.
The names of the countries are Crimsonia, Rebellania, and the People’s Bayou Republic, also referred to as PBR.
“It’s Mississippi designed and ran,” says Colonel Zambia, “so everything is football or hunting related.”
The operations during training are Objective Turkey Shoot, Objective Duck Fever and Objective River Rat.
“It’s a way to have fun with it, a little tongue-in-cheek humor,” says Colonel Ziamba.
Here’s the whole unedited interview with the Colonel:
