Thank you for the question. It's a very interesting question.
Have we improved our rate of preparing forces? We understand the minimum training requirements to put people into harm's way in a modern combat environment, particularly on the ground in Afghanistan now but also in the air and at sea, better than we did 10 or 12 years ago.
What does that mean in terms of the rate of preparation? In some cases it takes more preparation now for people to be ready. We've also confirmed the base skill set that we expect people to have. When we're talking about reserve preparedness, it's very important to me that we have revised the base skill set we expect every reservist to have so that when we start this next echelon of training to prepare for an operation, it's not a question of weapons skills, first aid skills, etc. I would say that we have reaffirmed the basic skill set we expect every soldier, sailor, airman, and airwoman to have. That encompasses fitness as well. It encompasses an awareness of current tactics, techniques, and procedures, but any training for an operation will be specialized.
I would say that we have a better idea of the timeline. I would say that we're investing early, better than we were before, so that we can reduce the amount of mission-specific training that is required. But I would say that we view the first rotation, or “rotation zero”, of an operation as a learning event as much as a doing event.
The other thing we have is a highly developed opportunity to turn lessons learned back into training for the next rotation, almost instantaneously, to the point where in Afghanistan, after we'd had a major incident, if we had learned something from it, that got translated back immediately into the rotation that was planning to come into theatre and was incorporated into their training.
In terms of the agility of preparation and speed of preparation, we have come a long way, but we do invest in making sure the people we put in harm's way are ready to deal with those realities, and there is only so much time you can cut without actually increasing the risk level for people.
Does that—