NA Planning,

I've sent you some information for the inbound Advance Party (51/5 and MARCENT Personnel) which is coming in October 7-11.

Please begin coordination with whomever needs to know in order to avoid a 7-day quarantine.  The 51/5 personnel will be coming in from Bahrain, the MARCENT from Florida (Naughton and Grabicki who have both been in Israel recently).  All of their passport photos and vaccine cards are attached.

Due to HIPAA and PII concerns, the files were delivered via DODSAFE.  You will need the email sent by the program, and the following Passphrase to get them:  

Passphrase: MEUPassports

Further, CAPT Strosin is taking you a copy of the brief we received from 51/5.  He's bringing a hardcopy to Camp Aviv on Sunday and I think you'll have a lot of your answers needed to begin planning then.  Specifically there is an "RFI answers" slide I think you'll find most helpful.  They do end with some questions of their own, which I would appreciate you getting returned answers as quickly as we can.

Lastly, the 51/5 personnel are still looking for Range Capability Briefs for NTC, Camp Adam, IMI (introduced by Arik over the phone), and Tel Arad.  I know some of the guys at 99th said Tel Arad is old news and they have better training areas, but I'm unaware of what those are, so I hesitate to even ask at this point. The MEU/MARCENT team knows only that I've told them you all have great ranges, but they are having a difficult time building a training plan off of that alone.  Any help you can give them would be great.

I spoke with Arik who is saying that there will be no live fire at NTC, no air/ground integration at any point, and little to no IDF/MEU integration.  I understand his concern to take the "first one slow," but this MEU is fully certified and operating as an air/ground/naval team.  To do unilateral (US only), single-element, dry-fire training only will provide less value than I think anyone is looking for.  I'm hoping that there are some changes moving forward.  Ideally heavy IDF/MEU integration, some live fire slipped in, and certainly some integration between the Naval, Air, and Ground teams. 

Please let me know how I can continue to help move the ball forward and/or if you see any issues with the inbound advance party.