Combat Knives

Typ­ic­ally, blade length of a com­bat knife is about 150-200 mm (6" to 8"), and blade width is about 30-60 mm (1.2" to 2.4"), and these di­men­sions are op­tim­al for cut­ting. Blades of mod­ern com­bat knives are made of high qual­ity steel, which provides first rate per­form­ance in flex­ib­il­ity and dur­ab­il­ity and en­ables a su­per­i­or sharpen­ing of the cut­ting edge. Usu­ally, the sharpened edge is one or one and a half-sided.

Weapons such as stilet­tos and dirks have not been used since the late Middle Ages when mus­kets re­placed swords and rapi­ers. Those knives were ideal to pierce chain ar­mors, but their cut­ting abil­ity was weak. Cur­rently, com­bat knives should meet high re­quire­ments: the dam­aging ef­fect should be equal to that of a fire­arm, and the ob­ject­ive is to in­jure but not to kill the rival.

As for the shape of a blade it­self, those blades which are semi-roun­ded are con­sidered to be the most ef­fi­cient be­cause of their op­tim­al ra­tio of cut­ting edge length and knife port­ab­il­ity. Today, the body of a mod­ern fight­er is pro­tec­ted by spe­cial cloth­ing and vari­ous shields, which make him al­most in­vul­ner­able to stab in­jur­ies. The areas of po­ten­tial dam­age in­clude only the neck, fore­arms, and face so it’s ne­ces­sary to con­sider the blade length to handle length ra­tio that provides the most pre­cise bal­ance of a knife so as to tar­get the vul­ner­able areas in a close com­bat.