One of the most popular knives at the Benchmade table is the SOCP Knife (Special Operations Combative Program) built by Benchmade with input from Greg Thompson. Greg is the head SOCP instructor out at Ft Bragg. It’s designed to be both an offensive and defensive weapon so if you’re wrapped up or someone grabs your primary weapon you can draw the SOCP to engage at close quarters (like house or cave) and fight away so you can revert to primary or secondary. The blade and finger eye/loop at the top is configured so you can still maintain positive weapon control and good trigger manipulation while the SOCP Knife is in your hand.
There’s a red training version available too, so you don’t bleed on the mat.
For more info on the SOCP Knife for your unit, contact Duffy(at).com or through Benchmade.
Tags: Benchmade, Greg Thompson, SOCP, Special Operations Combative Program
Oooopsss….
http://www.spartanbladesusa.com/cqb-tool-p-98.html
Oops? What do you mean?
They are likely just allowed to produce Greg’s design much like the Tarani karambits from 5.11 and Strider. One is made of a cheap steel in this case and the other is made of a super steel. The Spartan sheath looks more useful.
hey, this is almost the same angle picture in the Darley Defense Day picture, maybe 8 meters down the gravel path?
Disagree, the Spartan Blades version looks nice and custom, but one of the big draws for me to the Benchmade version was that the sheath is easily mounted on PALS and takes up little real estate. Only downside is the retention isn’t the most secure, so it’s a little iffy running it upside down (although this goes against the knife’s design technically). Still, took 30 seconds and bent the little retention nub thing in and I can’t shake it out no matter how hard I try now. Don’t know if that’s the case for all sheaths shipped out, but that’s the advice I’d give to other owners. That little serrated part right at the top (open part) of the clip. Take a pen and punch that sucker in.
This knife looks ideal for my upcoming tour but the retention on the blade doesn’t look terribly secure.
The problem is that while I would like to mount it fairly central on my body armour (so it can be used in the manner in which it was designed) there have been many cases of centrally mounted pieces of equipment being projected up into the face and neck in the instance of an explosion.
Since the knife isn’t very secure in the sheathe it seems like it would be a perfect candidate to becoming a projectile in the above scenario.
I’ve sent Benchmade an email about this knife a couple of weeks back to see if they had any recommendations but haven’t heard back from them.
You can always tape it in place. That will mitigate your IED worries. Of course, you won’t be able to get at the knife…
as far as I can see the spartan only has a single partial edge sharpened, while the benchmade has both edges of the partial tip sharpened.
Anybody know why the whole blade isn’t sharpened?