JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. – Soldiers, Marines and Airmen from across the nation came together here July 12-26 to take part in the U.S. Army Reserve’s annual Diamond Saber exercise.

“Diamond Saber is the largest finance exercise across the Army,” explained Army Capt. Preston Dawes, 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.”

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,” said Army Lt. Col. Camellia McKinney, Program Analysis and Evaluation senior analyst with the Office of the Chief of Army Reserve. “Diamond Saber is a huge culminating event for our finance community.”

Established in 2004,Diamond Saber evaluates Soldiers and joint partners on key tasks such as funding the force, payment support, disbursing operations, accounting, fiscal stewardship, auditability and data analytics.

“As the days go on, it’s going to ramp up and their interactions are going to become more hands-on,” said Air Force Capt. Matthew Terkay. “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 explained.