Military Sealift Command's hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH 20) returned to Naval Station Norfolk, May 16, after completing a seven-day underway in the Atlantic Ocean as part of Comfort Exercise (COMFEX) 2018.

COMFEX underway is an annual advance-phase training exercise, designed to prepare and test the capabilities of the ship's medical professionals through a battery of training evolutions, ensuring readiness to support major combat operations (MCOs) and rapidly answer any emergent crisis.

The exercise involved more than 450 personnel comprised of civil service mariners, joint service members, active and reserve, along with civilian medical professionals and educators. Despite coming from different backgrounds, crewmembers shared their medical expertise and worked together to accomplish their mission-training objectives.

"I think it went exceedingly well," said Capt. Kevin Robinson, commodore of Military Sealift Command Atlantic (MSCLANT), who made a shipboard visit during the week. "We have expanded the scope and the objectives of the exercise from what we ever did in the past and were able to inject some of the real-world lessons that we've learned from humanitarian operations last year."

In 2017, Comfort supported humanitarian aid and disaster relief efforts in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria.

Robinson said COMFEX 18 is an innovative, updated and proactive approach to prepare the ship's assets for readiness in plausible real-world scenarios and MCOs.

Completing tasks required complex operational problem solving within scenarios such as mass-casualty response to hyper-realistic simulations, receiving multiple patients ashore and afloat, humanitarian aid for migrant populations, infectious disease control and responding to chemical and biological weapon threats.

"I already knew my medical professionals could provide world-class care," said Capt. Kevin Buckley, commanding officer of the medical treatment facility (MTF) on board the ship. "What we wanted to do was increase their ability to flex and deal with additional complexities that can arise during military conflicts or humanitarian disasters."

Buckley said training objectives were tackled by establishing a bench of officers that could effectively operate a medical version of a military operations center (MOC) to coordinate the complex process of getting and tracking the casualties to the hospital and the level of care they require.

"We bring a complete hospital, providing definitive world-class care any place and anywhere in the world," said Buckley. "Don't our nation's sons and daughters deserve that."

Comfort is the third U.S. Navy ship to bear the name Comfort. Comfort was built as a San Clemente-class oil tanker in 1976 by the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company. Her original name was S.S. Rose City and the ship was launched from San Diego.

The ship's career as an oil tanker ended when it was delivered to the U.S. Navy as USNS Comfort Dec. 1, 1987.

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For more information, visit www.navy.mil, www.facebook.com/usnavy, or www.twitter.com/usnavy.

For more news from Military Sealift Command, visit www.navy.mil/.