Major Mike Swienton deployed as an individual augmentee to Afghanistan in February 2006. He was assigned to the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan which had responsibility for oversight of the Afghan Army and police forces. His main responsibility was to help stand up the Afghan Army engineering program. Upon getting there, he quickly realized that he needed to focus on standardizing both equipment and training. He also got to work with a lot of coalition forces and one of his favorite experiences was going to a Polish Christmas ceremony. He worked closely with all of the other services as well. He learned that in a joint environment, at the drop of a hat some people will detour left or right and you're going to have to react. The one thing he believes the Army needs to improve on is the individual augmentee process. The way the joint manning document was filled seemed to be haphazardly done. It felt as if the Fort Benning CRC was more of an unemployment office than a facilitator of their training.

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