(Radio Iowa) – Nearly four-thousand Iowa Army National Guard soldiers are in the midst of three weeks of rigorous summer training at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Johnson, Louisiana. The commander of the ground troops, Brigadier General Derek Adams, says this training should prepare them for anything.

“This training is, is the best. And most difficult that the army has to offer. And so if you train on the most difficult scenarios against the toughest adversary, you’re prepared to do any operation that would be called upon for the for the unit,” he says. Colonel Tony Smithart, the 734th Regional Support Group Commander, says troops from the Second Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Divisions and nearly 18-hundred soldiers from across the state who will soon be going overseas are among the soldiers taking part in the training.

“The key mission for the 734th Regional Sport Group is to build combat power for forces to flow into an assigned mission and we’ve received about six-thousand soldiers for the exercise, two-thousand pieces of equipment that the 734th R-S-G has received and moved into staging yards for the forces that are deploying to the exercise to be ready to do their mission,” he says.

This is the final training step for the soldiers who will be deployed overseas as part of Operation Inherent Resolve.