On a practical level why should we care what the military uses?

not2sharp

not2sharp

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Greg,

I have enjoyed your writing for many years, and I am happy to have played with many of the fine knives you mentioned in your book. On a practical level, though, I just don't see how the military experience is relevant in a civilian environment.

The military deploys with enormous numbers of personel, and they are armed with everything they can possibly handle, and they are free to carry knives and other equipment openly. They are supported in the field by a tremendous logistical operation, and should something fail a replacement can be on its way with the next supply drop. The modern army doesn't depend on foraging, and with a few exceptions It doesn't have to worry about survival in the civilian sense. True the special forces operate in smaller units, and use some camp craft, but, even here they usually draw on logistical support that no civilian operation can even begin to afford.

There are very good issued military knives, as well as plenty of jumk; and civilain and military needs compare like apples and oranges. I don't understand why there is so much emphasis on military use. From a purely historical perspective we should know, but on a practical level, it really doesn't matter.

n2s
 
Why should we care what the military uses? You may be right, but how 'bout this... The lowly foot soldier uses and abuses his gear harder and longer than most of us ever will. If it'll stand up to that level of abuse, it will almost certainly withstand anything anyone short of Cliff Stamp can dish out. Think of the military as the ultimate gear lab. :D

Oops! Didn't see that you specifically addressed that one to Greg.
 
Tommy,

Thanks for the reply. I wanted to welcome Greg, but feel free to comment.

BTW, I agree that, nothing puts gear to the test better than an army of fit 19 and 20 year olds on adrenalin. But, that can work against us. First, we seldom see formal performance reports on knives, and perhaps more significantly, the procurement process is geared towards making things army proof. Knives have often been left very soft to reduce the amount of breakage. Which is adequate from a military perspective, but compares poorly with many standard civilian products.

n2s
 
not2sharp, interesting that you comment that "should something fail its replacement can be on its way with the next replacement drop." It seems to me that the next replacement drop might be many hours too late for the soldier whose knife breaks while prying open a case of ammo for the SAW while in action.
 
Your point is well taken.

Some thoughts -

The knife, or military bayonet, is and will continue to be an important piece of personal equipment for the soldier, sailor, Marine, or airman. Whether an issue item or private purchase, knives / bayonets are used more than most know and are simply the one thing most service personnel feel comfortable having at their side for whatever reason.

Combat or fighting knives challenge knife designers and makers for any number of good reasons. And the market is solid. A number of very good designs come out of the combat / fighting knife catagory which flow over into the strictly civilian market. This is especially true for tactical folders and fixed blades, where the markets meld together in terms of shared performance considerations.

What is difficult is getting real world evalutions from serious business military knife users into the public forum. By that I mean military folks in harm's way who take a moment to share how their edged weapons and tools are performing in the real world. When you do get such a report, or article, or message, it can be worth its weight in gold. Troops don't BS about stuff that doesn't work, and they offer great support of stuff that does.

All of us can benefit from such first-hand insights and observations.

As for issue knives...always been the lowest bidder who wins the contract unless the item is a specialty order with serious funding available behind it. Mass production bayonets and knives can be either great for what they are intended for, or horrible and therefore replaced by private purchase equipment.

I think you draw what good information you can from what you find, and if it applies to your needs, wants, or expectations then the military angle is a valid one. If not, disregard and seek a more productive source of information to meet your needs.
 
"...the next replacement drop might be many hours too late for the soldier whose knife breaks while prying open a case of ammo for the SAW while in action."
Click to expand...

I am sure that if something like this were to happen, you would have a few extra knives handed to you faster than you could possibly ask for them. It is not a soldier with a broken knife, it is just one broken tool within the population of tools that exist within the unit. If it were really every man for himself the battle would have already been lost.

n2s
 
In combat there's no guarantee that anything is going to be resupplied or replaced in any manner at the precise moment you need it.

And as often as not one can find one's self quite alone.

For this reason you want your equipment and weaponry to be the absolute best it can be in terms of ruggedness, reliability, and strength. Knives, included.

For that reason military knives that have been well designed, carefully made, and tested hard before being sold to those who have use of such a precision weapon / tool are highly valued.

If you're busting open an ammo can or crate for more ammunition, you DON'T want to have to look around and start asking someone for a knife 'cause yours just broke. It's a little late at that point.
 
I have often looked to the military for gear recommendations, but you do have to do this in a certain way. If you will do activities that are similar to what soldiers do, then they are a pretty accurate test bed. I love reading Steven Dick's articles in Tactical Knives magazine for this reason. He said in the recent issue that combat is like a long camping trip where people shoot at you. The combat bladee will be used for "camping" type chores more often than not. So, of soldiers say a ka-bar makes for a great field tool, I feel confident that my money would be well spent on a ka-bar for a camping type blade. If I did activities that military folks don't do, I wouldn't look to them for blade recommendations.
 
soldiers say a ka-bar makes for a great field tool, I feel confident that my money would be well spent on a ka-bar for a camping type blade.
Click to expand...

Yes and no, it depends on what relevant experience these soldiers have. The Ka-Bar would be "great" in comparison to what?

One thing soldiers are consistent in though, is that will generally refuse to carry worthless equipment. If the knife failes to measure up it will be discarded very quickly.

n2s
 
I think we are on the same page 2sharp. By great field tool, i meant for the camping chores. Cookign with, preparing wood for the fire, and so on. If a soldier says a ka-bar does these tasks well, then I would feel confident in buying one.

An example of where I'd be more skeptical would be taking what soldiers recommend as good field blades to mean they would be good for th eurban jungle. As great as a ka-bar is, smaller fixed blades and tac folders are much easier to use, you know? I give this as just a loose example.
 
not2sharp, I take some small umbrage at your "hand waving" of logistics operations to instantly hand you exactly what you just broke. It ain't so! For one thing, there is a priority to logistics, (1) ammunition, (2) fuel, (3) maintenance, (4) barrier material (5) food and water, and (6) general supplies. Now these priorities differ slightly whether you are Special Forces or Armor, but the point is that a replacement for your knife (normally a replacement for your issue bayonet because I didn't issue you a "knife") is going to by far down the list.

If you think you need a knife, take one. If you think you might need a replacement for that knife, take two! A distant relative who is an SF Captain left for Afghanistan in January. I gave him my Mad Dog ATAK Hunter, a Benchmade AFO, and told him to take the SOG SEAL 2000 I had given him a couple of years earlier, and also a good Camillus combat/utility (you would call it a "kabar" -- I wouldn't). The Army issued him an M9 bayonet and a multitool. He also has a SAK.

In short, don't argue logistics if you aren't in that business. Next to a soldier who deals in logistics I would listen to the combat soldier who "receives" that logistic before I'd listen to someone who has been neither.

Bruce Woodbury
(Retired Logistics Officer)
 
Sound insight and advice re: taking what you need...and may need to replace on a moment's notice.

If you double up you are best advised to emulate your primary knife. Hence, a KA-BAR primary should see a KA-BAR or ka-bar offshoot back-up. Same for folder, same for multi-tool. Keep it simple and since you train with one, you don't want to go to a back-up that you haven't used or worked with before REALLY needing the knife now.

Hmmmm...

Kinda puts a new spin on $600 primary combat and fighting knives, yes? $500 tactical folders? Ouch!

One reason it's exciting to see TOPS Knives and Strider out there making and offering quality, experience driven designs and products at very reasonable (and replaceable...and you can buy two for the price of one) rates.

Well worth one's consideration and objective decision making when looking at equipment you're trusting - not BETTING - your life to.
 
Bruce,

Thanks for the information. I have never served in the military, nor have I ever claimed to have served (flat feet and poor eyesight killed that option). However, I believe our positions are not that far apart.

If, as someone posted above, a knife were a critical component, required to for instance open an ammo crate, then it would probably be assigned sufficient priority to ensure that the unit was adequately supplied. As it is, the knife, with the exception of a bayonet, some machetes, and perhaps a multitool, is not even part of a soldier's basic load. We can't have it both ways. Either the item is mission critical and henced readily supplied, or it is not.

My arguement in this thread has been that perhaps a knife is less critical piece of equipment within a military environment then it would be in a civilian environment. Hence the military would rely less on their knives, and their experience should have less bearing, than the experience of our associates in the outdoors.

n2s
 
I wasn't an operator, secret squirel, or chef, so I can only speak from a lowly combat arms soldier's perspective.

I used my knife / knives every day whether in the field or in garrison. If my Cold Steel SRK wasn't being used on ammo crates, firing stakes, or C4, my Gerber / Leatherman multitool was opening MRE's, mail, cutting tape, C4 wrappers, grenade cans, commo wire, det cord, 550 cord, etc.

Though it may not be issued to everyone (heck, we got Camillus Elictrician's knives on the <b>squad</b> level in our demo kit) every soldier should have at least one good knife.

I'm also going to take issue with Bruce's comment about carrying a spare of every knife. Though it might be a great idea if the soldier has daily access to their duffel bag, I was so weighted down by equipment that common gear sometimes got left behind on missions to make room for mission essential equipment. Look, when you are carrying a M203, SINGARs radio, CEOI, NVGs, batteries, C4, blasting caps, water, ammo, claymore, Etool, food, etc, sometimes all you have room for are socks - forget multiple redundancy in knives.

You get knives that aren't likely to break during tasks, instead of holding a razor edge forever and a day. Lower enlisted pay means not buying a knife that's equal to 2 months take home - it means getting something you can replace in the PX if it gets lost / broken on deployment / falls out the Blackhawk over the ocean / stolen by a KATUSA / ripped away by prop blast.

Just my experience.

Kevin
 
Well, someone had to set up all those pickets, LOWLY engineer! I had way too much cofee to consume and pockets for my delicate hands!
 
Listen Mr. "In Flight Missle Repair" - just because I wasn't TDY at the Holiday Inn every week, playing "Guess my job" in the hotel bar, trying to pick up the 50 year old divorcee's, while pretending I was a Space Shuttle Door Gunner doesn't mean that my palty 12 second combat life expectancy was entirely worthless.

After all, of the two of us, I know I wasn't the one that was issued knee pads and ass / groin armor. :D Bomb defusing bastid.

For the uninitiated, Rob was one of those EOD guys who got to ride around in the rear, sleep in air conditioned tents, got TDY pay for deploying to the baseball field for field problems. Training days included Barbequeing and Volleyball. Lucky SOB.

Kevin
 
Of course!

I had to cultivate my winning smile and easy boyish charm on those baseball fields before being blown heroically to bits for the children of America!! (insert patriotic music here) Someone had to do your dirty job. Blow the breach! Not me! The breach, man!

(For the uninitiated Combat Engineers often thought crimping blasting caps was best served with teeth instead of crimping tools.)

Of course then they were much more popular "in the barracks" during the late night festivals of goat meat MRE consumption!
 
Hey, Combat Engineers are the bastard children of Combat Arms... more heavily armed than an infantry platoon, less armored than tanks, more vehicles than Artillery, not quite smart enough to be ADA. Hell, these days I hear they don't even trust us with det cord anymore - all shock tube and caps. Poor bastids :D

As for popularity, we just had better endurance, you guys were much more attractive with your long flaxen hair and astonishingly womanly physiques...

Kevin
 
Of course I've never been astonished by my physique, although my hotel room attacker would be as the finely sculpted muscles sprang into cat-like action!
 
Coulda been. Passed it up to stay 11B. Then thought the 18 series would be cool.

After all, funny hat; divorce papers issued upon graduation from the "Q" Curse; exotic places with equally exotic diseases; TDY $$ they always wanted back...in full; and the chance to get skewed from behind by one of your indig who was actually one of THEIR indig:mad:

I dunno. Crew Chief would have been good:(

Agree. If you can afford to buy / carry redundant knives that's a good thing. Or have one back at the safe house, at least. If not, what you got is what you got.

N2S is well intentioned here but kinda missing the point. You had to be there to experience the experience. No issue there. We all do what we can, when we can. Just be open to the thought that maybe, just maybe, there's room for discussion.

Coulda been a door gunner, too. I think expected breathing time was about 6 seconds for this gig. No funny hat, though. And damn little TDY.

:D
 
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