FRIDAY FOTO Extra (February 28, 2014)

A Study in Concentration

(U.S. Army Photo by Visual Information Specialist Markus Rauchenberger

Waiting to embark on an airborne exercise, U.S. Army Capt. Lindsey Ryan sits in full parachute harness familiarizing herself with a training manual. The captain is a paratrooper assigned to the Brigade Support Battalion of the 173rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne). The Sky Soldiers, in conjunction with paratroopers with the Polish 6th Airborne Brigade, conducted the exercise at the 7th Army Joint Multinational Training Command’s Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany on February 20, 2014.

Click here to see more photos of the paratroopers in action. Here’s their Facebook page.

And if you speak Polish, here is the 6th Airborne Brigade’s Facebook page. Good photos even if you don’t mówi po polsku. BTW, if you’ve seen the World War II film “A Bridge Too Far,” about the massive 1944 Allied parachute drop into the Netherlands, you’ve seen the antecedents of the Polish paratroops and their leader, Major General Stanislaw Sosabowski (played by Gene Hackman in the movie.)

FRIDAY FOTO (February 28, 2014)

Inside the Osprey

(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Corporal Austin Schlosser)

U.S. Marines and Royal Thai Marines sit in an MV-22B Osprey as part of fast execution training during Exercise Cobra Gold 2014 in Utapao, Thailand.

Cobra Gold, the largest and oldest military exercise in Southeast Asia, originally started as a training exercise to strengthen the relationship, mission readiness and interoperability between troops of the Kingdom of Thailand and the United States. This year, the 33rd iteration of Cobra Gold, the United States and Thailand welcomed participants from Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and, for the first time, the People’s Republic of China.

The exercise included an amphibious operations, helicopter assault, disaster site evacuation and training with live ammunition, according to the Pattaya Mail.  The U.S. Marines seen here are with 2nd platoon, Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division.

To see what the Osprey tilt rotor aircraft looks like from the outside and other photos of the exercise, click here.