JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. - About 280 Soldiers from the 5th Battalion, 5th Air Defense Artillery Regiment will be reunited with friends and families at a "welcome home" ceremony currently scheduled for 3 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 12 at Wilson Gym on JBLM Lewis-North.

The unit deployed in January 2010 and has spent the past year spread across 15 different locations in Iraq, from Mosul in the north to the southern city of Basra, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn. 

The JBLM Soldiers were part of a larger air defense task force while in Iraq known as Joint Task Force 5-5 ADA which totaled almost 430 Soldiers and Sailors whose mission was to provide Counter-Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar (C-RAM) "sense and warn" capabilities to detect incoming indirect fire attacks and to alert forces.  In various locations throughout Iraq, JTF 5-5 ADA also had the capability to intercept and destroy incoming indirect fire, protecting mission essential assets.

This was the unit's third deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. They completed their second deployment in May 2008.