When the Gulf War took off in Iraq in the early 1990s, the knife industry took off, too, and a steady stream of tactical fixed blades has surfed the wave ever since. Needless to say, there are military fixed blades aplenty in the cutlery industry with no single design or manufacturer having a chokehold on today’s market. This has given knife users an abundance of choices, from pure fighters to utility users and everything in between.
A diverse quartet of the genre includes the Condor Fighter Knife, Emerson CQC-7 Fixed Blade, KABAR/John Ek Commando Short Clip and Spartan Blades Harsey Fighter. To determine their strengths and weaknesses, the first order of business was a common test for penetration.
I set up a heavy-duty corrugated-board box with a 1-inch Styrofoam™ liner made for shipping frozen foods. I tested each knife by thrusting
