Upon arriving in Kuwait in late-December 2002 with the advanced element from Bravo Company, 8th Communications Battalion, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, Major Michael Phillips (at the time a captain) began making preparations to support the Marine Logistics Command in what became Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. Among the issues he had to contend with before major combat operations kicked off - as well as afterwards - were widespread frequency confliction and a frustrating, indeed "harmful," amount of bandwidth constraints. "The biggest problem we had," Phillips said, "was that we had alternate paths to use before that weren't available to us when we got there. The rest of the Marines, they were focused on the fight. They were building everything up north, more towards the border. Everything in Kuwait was on us, to figure it out." Overcoming and working around such constraints proved difficult but hardly impossible during Phillips' six-month deployment, due in large part to his having brought “every piece of tactical comm equipment” he could pack into his vans, as well as executing the frequent, though non-doctrinal, handshake con’ with other units. In this interview, Phillips also discusses his prior service as a Marine Corps Communications School instructor, what equipment worked best (and worst) in Iraq and, in addition, his observations on the principal comm-related lessons learned that have been gleaned from OIF.

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