Lundquist: You don’t embark aircraft but you can operate a variety of rotary wing aircraft.

Dalmau: We’ve done all of the variants of H-60s. We operated with the Chinooks, -53s, -22s. We landed some of the CH-47s from HMS Ocean during this exercise. And we’re conducting flight ops with U.S. Air Force V-22s right now.

Lundquist: I was just up in helicopter control watching them. Working with the Dutch and the Brits during BALTOPS, what are you learning from them and what are they learning from you? Is there some cross-training or sharing of experience or knowledge you’re getting from working with them?

Dalmau: I think the exercise allows us to see our different capabilities that we have with each other, and then how we integrate with them with respect to communication. I think that’s the big one – is how we communicate might be slightly different from the way they communicate and making sure that what we are trying to accomplish is being understood.

Lundquist: But isn’t there a NATO standard procedure for communicating?

Dalmau: There is, but there are some communications that are not completely the same. For example, we took the Swedish P90s into our well, so they had the opportunity to see how we control traffic to our well. My junior officers learned a lot listening on the various RT circuits the OPFOR combatants used. My JOs made a lot of comments to me about how well the British communicate on the RT circuit. I explained to them how the Royal Navy officers specialize in seaman officers, or weapons, or engineering. So this has been a good opportunity to explain the differences between the different navies and how our officers are developed from ensign to up in the ranks.

Lundquist: Have you cross-decked any of your officers to the other ships?

Dalmau: We sent some of our people over to the Dutch LPD, the Johan de Witt, while we were off the coast of Finland, and we had an opportunity to interact with them.

Lundquist: Did they send some of their people over here?