U.S. Army Col. Ronald Tammaro, Commander of the 56th Troop Command, Rhode Island National Guard, discusses the history and events of Leapfest 2019 at West Kingston, RI., Aug. 5, 2019. Leapfest is the largest, longest standing, international static line parachute training event and competition hosted by the 56th Troop Command, Rhode Island Army National Guard to promote high level technical training and esprit de corps within the International Airborne community. (U.S. Army Reserve video by Sgt Joshua Wooten)

Transcript:

So Leapfest is the largest, longest serving actual parachute competition in the world. So it’s a world-class event. So paratroopers from all around the world come to Rhode Island for this event. So what this event is really for is efficiency, also training, and camaraderie. So it’s NATO forces and non-member NATO forces coming together with the United States paratroopers and not only to compete but to train and to improve their proficiency. The paratroopers arrive at the pickup zone, and they don their equipment, jump masters do a personal inspection. And then they go to the manifest part, in which they then enter the aircraft to go to the drop zone, and that’s where the competition is. So when they leave the aircraft in teams, so normally, there are about five, six teams on an aircraft, usually 10 paratroopers at a time in the air, judges descend into the field. And there are three X-marks, Xes on the field, and the team that gets to the X quickest, and the individual that gets there the quickest is timed by the judges. And that’s how the competition is judged and is conducted. The Rhode Island Army National Guard hosts this world-class event. And it showcases our capabilities and all the training and all the preparation that goes into that. It’s amazing how the smallest state in the nation actually represents the National Guard Bureau and conducted this world-class event, bringing our allies together to train and to increase our proficiency and to, camaraderie, esprit de corps, you know, that’s important, we make friends here. (camera whirring and clicking) So if you look at the world stage right now, it’s important that America and her allies train in conjunction with each other to face threats around the world. We don’t know when they’re gonna be or where, but we have to be prepared. So if we look at the overall purpose of this event, that, it signifies that. We also, another thing, too– Rhode Island National Guard is very unique. We’ve had Special Forces, we have infantry airborne, we have aviation, so we’re able to bring all these assets and capabilities together to actually put on this world-class event. So we’ve got about 13 foreign countries that are here. And so we have Canada, Mexico, Antilles, Dominican Republic, Morocco, so like I said, we have NATO members and non-NATO members, but those are our allies. So we have about 34 USA teams that are here with us too, so.