Daggers have made a serious comeback. We first ran this story last September, but we constantly get new readers so we thought it would be a good idea to republish it since the story last week on the Benchmade SOCP knife was so popular. We’d also like to add some great comments by reader Acid Gambit that should help dispel much of the misunderstanding of this class of knife.
Greg designed this knife from direct input from THE most elite soldiers in the world. Operational experience built this knife. Thousands of entries into really bad buildings in IZ and AF. It was not dreamed up by video gamers, not range commandos, not cops. Assaulters at the highest level, who have been blind sided and tackled while clearing nasty places were the driving input for this knife.
During CQB it is definitely possible that an assaulter will become tied up in a fight with a bad guy. In many situations he may be unable to use his primary weapon and unable to draw his secondary ( tackled to the ground or over furniture). At this point the knife comes out and can stab and slash the bad guy until the assaulter can get to his pistol and put 2 in the enemy. The knife is used to create space for you to get to your pistol. The assaulter can draw his pistol while still holding the knife, finish the fight, stand up and put his tools away and get back to work.
The knife is not designed for you to run around and do El Prez mag change drills while holding it. I can’t think of a knife that is designed for that, so don’t get confused. The SOC-P knife is meant to save your life and allow you to fight back to your pistol or rifle and still be able to pull the trigger with your strong hand, or support the pistol/rifle with your weak hand, while still holding the knife.
Last week, we mentioned the recently released Special Operations Combatives Program (SOC-P) knife designed by Greg Thompson. While we described the features of the dagger, this graphic from Benchmade does a great job of illustrating the sequence of events of getting it into action and how the SOC-P knife is used.
