Pirate Takedown - Force Recon Style

The statistics of the blog suggest around 8,000 people spend about 5 minutes a day reading the content every day. Today I offer almost 5 minutes of video to think about. Best played with sound up.

While in San Diego this week I met a lot of great people, but the person I had never met whom I spent the most time with this week was Captain Alexander Martin, USMC. Alex has a presentation on the take down of Magellan Star that by all accounts is absolutely brilliant, and I believe this video is part of that presentation.

When I think about recent events involving the South Korean raid and contrast it with the USMC action on Magellan Star, the first thing that comes to mind is that the Marines didn't kill anyone - while the South Koreans killed a bunch of folks. The Marines certainly could have killed them all, but didn't. That is a tremendously important point that should not be overlooked or dismissed. The close quarters discipline was developed in the training and workups prior to the deployment. As Captain Martin explains, "my guys were trained for that mission... and our training was good."

Captain Martin only has a few more weeks before he retires from active duty in the Marine Corps, and I would encourage folks who are in this business to contact Captain Martin and have him give his presentation to your organization - then more importantly talk to him. That guy is an idea factory with experience that goes well beyond a single ship rescue or Force Recon platoon commander.

If I was to use one word to describe Captain Martin it would be "creative." Look, there are a bunch of words that describe Marines, particularly the type who lead Force Recon platoons, but the word "creative" is usually not one of the first words anyone would use. Not true with Captain Martin, "creative" works with him. I don't know if it is the touch of humanities in his private life (the guy really gets the art world), his family background, or he simply never really had his creativity beat out of him by the Marine Corps but my time with Captain Martin ended up being some of the best thought provoking debate/discussion in San Diego.

I have a bunch of video from the week of both Marines and the conference itself. Once my teenage daughter shows me how to convert it and format it for YouTube, I'll post links.