LAKEHURST – Soldiers, marines and airmen from across the nation came together at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst during to take part in the U.S. Army Reserve’s annual Diamond Saber exercise.
This served to be an exercise of the mind more than physical prowess but it was just as important. Army Captain Preston Dews explained the details of its purpose. “Diamond Saber is the largest finance exercise across the Army.”
Dawes is the commander of the U.S. Army Reserve’s 390th Finance Company. “We’re working to develop the training narrative and make sure it is transmitted effectively.”
The exercise provides the ideal training for finance and comptroller soldiers. The training is structured in a manner where they can learn from experts and also learn from each other before they get to exercise that knowledge and are evaluated,
Diamond Saber is an Army Reserve–led finance training exercise that prepares active-duty, Reserve, and National Guard service members for the warfighting functions of funding, disbursing, and managing Army resources focusing on deployment readiness.
“Readiness is always number one in our priorities. Diamond Saber is a huge culminating event for our finance community,” said Army Lt. Col. Camellia McKinney, Program Analysis and Evaluation senior analyst with the Office of the Chief of Army Reserve.
Since 2004, Diamond Saber has been evaluating soldiers and joint partners on key tasks such as funding the force, payment support, disbursing operations, accounting, fiscal stewardship, auditability and data analytics.
“Diamond Saber is the World Cup, the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals of financial management,” explained Lieutenant Jason Hempstead, 78th Training Division Diamond Saber exercise director said in a U.S. Army publication about the annual Joint Base event. “It brings finance and comptroller units from all components – active, Guard and Reserve – together to train hard, learn from each other and compete in a friendly manner.”
Air Force Captain Matthew Terkay said, “as the days go on, it’s going to ramp up and their interactions are going to become more hands-on. We approach this as a ‘Crawl, Walk, Run,’ but with such a time crunch the crawl phase is very short, the walk phase is very short, and in a couple days they’re in a full-out sprint.”
This structure allows participants to practice in realistic conditions, enabling the exercise to serve as a key readiness event for military finance units preparing for overseas deployment.
“This is how we get our cashiers and our finance and disbursing specialists to test their capabilities, whether for the first time they’re preparing to go overseas, or if they’re on their annual training cycle and they’re trying to give their commands the ability to assess their unit’s capabilities,” Dawes added.
During the exercises it was noted that as money always matters to everyone, during conflicts, the nation’s financial management support teams fund the fight and provide critical support to the warfighter by establishing banking operations and using the local economy.
