Chris (Blue Force Gear)
I’m Chris Sizelove with Blue Force Gear, and today we’re super excited to have Jared Reston here from Reston Training Group. This wasn’t really planned, but whenever we get together, we inevitably start talking about gear—where we came from, how we got to where we are—and it’s always a lot of fun.

Just off camera, we started talking about tactical marking. Of course, Blue Force Gear made the MARCO quite a while ago to address a lot of things we knew were terrible about tactical marking in general—not necessarily the “why,” but the “how.” MARCO tackled that really well, and I noticed there’s one on your belt. Could you go back about 15 years and talk about some of your experiences with marking, how we got here, and then I’ll share my experiences as well?

Jared (Reston Training Group)
Sure. For me, it used to be the big chem light bundle hanging off my back—different chem lights in different colors. We had all these tricks like taping them up so they wouldn’t put out too much light, using 550 cord to keep them together, and so on. You’d end up with four or five green, a couple blue, a couple red, maybe some IR. That bundle got pretty large, and sometimes the 550 cord came undone or broke. It just wasn’t built for what we were doing.

When MARCO came out, it was a huge improvement. It’s this small magazine of mini-chem sticks that put out enough light for marking, and you can carry a lot of them without taking up much space. There’s no real snag hazard, and it made everything much simpler.

Chris
That was the goal. I had the same experience: ten standard 6-inch chem lights on one side of my gear, ten on the other side, and ten on my back—totaling 30 chem lights. They were always taped up so they wouldn’t be too bright under night vision. Plus, we had to rig up 550 cord and other hardware so they wouldn’t dangle everywhere. If you were under a time constraint—like in SWAT—you didn’t have time for that “arts and crafts hour.”

Another huge problem was that UV light kills chem lights—the “magic juice” inside gets destroyed if they’re left in direct sunlight too long. If you’re on a range all day, by the time you actually need them, they might not work. The MARCO pouch was designed to block UV light. You can turn the MARCO magazine around in its pouch so the sticks don’t get killed by the sun. That way, they’ll still work when you need them.

Jared
In law enforcement, we might not do a ton of marking for a typical search warrant, but if we’re hitting a large structure, it’s a must. It’s nice just having MARCO on your belt all the time. If you put a few guys on a team each carrying a MARCO, you can mark all day without worrying if you have enough. Marking is critical for safety and efficiency, especially when you have a big crew in a big place. Everyone has to be ready to mark on command.

Chris
Exactly. And you need more than three chem lights. I cringe now when I see guys on social media with just two or three. There are always more people, places, and things to mark than you expect. With MARCO, you can carry 30 sticks in one magazine, another 30 in a second color, plus another 60 in your cargo pockets if you really need it. On large-scale operations—like the Boston Marathon bombing manhunt where they had to search entire neighborhoods—you realize how important it is to mark effectively.

Jared
It’s a well-thought-out product—purpose-built. You can push a stick out with a gloved hand, snap it, and drop it. No more hanging 550 cords or giant bundles. I’ve even used IR MARCOs in classes to mark firing lines or identify ant hills so students don’t stand on them during a night shoot. It’s good for safety, plain and simple.

Chris
Absolutely. Thanks, Jared. Tactical marking is a necessity: you have people, places, and things to identify, and there’s no getting around that. If you look at all the downsides of the old chem light bundle and compare them to MARCO, MARCO comes out way ahead. It simplifies something that everyone on the team needs to do anyway and removes all the frustrating “arts and crafts” prep work.