Bayonet doubles as a fighting knife.

After years of debate, the Marines are getting their own bayonet, one that can be detached from a rifle barrel and used in hand-to-hand combat.

The Marines have ordered 99,987 of the new bayonets--known as the OKC3S--from the Ontario Knife Company of Franklinville, N.Y., at a price of $3.85 million, according to Maj. Renee A. Holmes, a project officer at Marine Corps Systems Command.

The OKC3S is the first bayonet designed exclusively for the Marine Corps, said Homer M. Brett, a former Marine and author of "The Military Knife & Bayonet" who serves as an edged-weapons consultant to the service.

Unlike the current M7 bayonet, which was intended primarily to be used at the end of a rifle as a stabbing weapon, the OKC3S is meant to double as a fighting knife that can be used on its own, Brett said.

"The M7 does an adequate job in a straight thrust, but the OKC3S does a much better job of hacking and slashing," he explained. It has an eight-inch razor-sharp blade, compared with the 6.25-inch stabbing blade on the M7. Also, Holmes said, the OKC3S--unlike the M7--can pierce a flak jacket.

In addition, the OKC3S has a grooved handle that has been designed ergonomically to reduce hand fatigue, said Nick Trbovich (cq) Jr., Ontario's president and chief executive officer. The company used computer modeling and simulation to find an optimum design, he said.

"We tried 100 different variations before settling on this one," Trbovich said. "We identified where, on the handle, the blister points might be and eliminated them."

The ergonomic handle and the longer blade make the OKC3S "an excellent fighting knife," Brett said. Those same qualities make it a good all-around camp knife, as well, he said. For example, it can be used for cutting rope, pounding tent pegs or opening tin cans. The OKC3S blade even has 1.75 inches of saw-like serrations near the guard, which can be used for sawing small branches.

Although the OKC3S closely resembles the famed Ka-Bar combat knife--which U.S. forces have used since World War II--the bayonet is not intended to replace the knife, Brett said. "There probably always will be a need for a combat knife that is never used as a bayonet," he said.

The OKC3S fits the entire M16 family of rifles, including the M4 carbine. Brett said that in today's world of highly technical military systems, he occasionally is asked whether there is still a need for such a basic weapon as the bayonet, which is said to have been deployed first in Bayonne, France in 1647.

The OKC3S already has seen service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although today's combat forces seldom make the kinds of massed bayonet charges that took place during World War I, "there are still plenty of combat uses for the bayonet," Brett said. Among them:

* Self defense.

* Assaults against dug-in enemy positions, particularly in tight spots, such as trenches, foxholes, caves and inside buildings, where shooting may be dangerous to friendly forces or noncombatants, or some degree of stealth is desirable.

* As a less-than-lethal force for use in controlling civil disturbances and prisoners of war.

"The bayonet is a very useful psychological weapon," Brett said. "Just ordering a platoon of Marines to 'fix bayonets' and allowing your opponents to contemplate the damage they can do--just that alone--can sometimes destroy their will to fight."