They call them “box cutters,” but everyone on the flightline knows what the term really means. The blades slide out at the push of a button, revealing high-end knives made and marketed for active combat. They cost the federal government hundreds of dollars each — and come free to maintenance workers in the Air Force who order them through the supply system and hand them out as favors.
For nearly a decade, Air Force maintenance units spent more than $1.79 million in taxpayer funds buying 5,166 high-end knives and other luxury items, including switchblades and combat-style tactical knives with no legitimate maintenance use, The Intercept has found. It’s a drop in the bucket of a U.S. military budget creeping ever closer to a trillion dollars, about $300 billion of which belongs to the Air Force. But with a military budget so bloated, the knife-ordering frenzy illustrates how obviously frivolous spending can go unchecked.
“Everyone knew we didn’t need them,” said a former noncommissioned officer recently honorably discharged from Hill Air Force Base. “There was literally zero justification in any maintenance field.”
For pocket knives the scale is sort of divided like Production -> Midtech -> Custom. Even some production knives are pushing $500 (or more) now
I don’t doubt that. I also don’t want to deny a service member a knife. I carry one and think it’s pretty fucking handy.
My first point is that a serviceable utilitarian fixed-blade knife is in the $30-$50 range. With the service-member markup that is not anywhere near $300.
My second point is that buying a tool is about meeting the utilitarian need first. Maybe an entry level knife might not hold up as well as a mid-range of the same design, but as the price goes up, you are getting diminishing returns on utility. It might be off an assembly line, but anything over $50 is still a luxury.