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Microtech LUDT
The Microtech LUDT carries the company's origin story in its pocket clip. It descends directly from the UDT, the first knife Anthony and Susan Marfione released when they launched Microtech in 1994, an automatic built with an action powerful enough to fire its blade underwater. Three decades of refinement later, the LUDT is that founding design perfected, and it remains the purest expression of what the Microtech lineup is about.
What Does LUDT Stand For
LUDT stands for Large Underwater Demolition Team, honoring the Navy frogmen who became the first SEALs. The early UDT prototypes came in small, medium, and large sizes with rubber Kraton inlays before Microtech consolidated the line around the large frame, and the name stuck. The explosive deployment that let the original fire underwater is still the heart of the knife.
Microtech LUDT Gen III Upgrades
Gen III is a thorough reworking of the platform: a pivot riding on 24 silica carbide bearings for the smoothest action in the model's history, 3M grip inlays in the anodized 6061-T6 handle, standard Torx hardware you can service at home, and a fuller groove, crowned spine, and thumb-ramp jimping on a Bohler M390MK blade. The result is a 3.5-inch blade in an 8-inch, 3.6-ounce package. We put the whole thing through its paces in our Microtech LUDT Gen III review.
LUDT RAM-LOK and Blade Styles
The platform now runs two ways: the classic push-button auto and the LUDT RAM-LOK, a manual version built on the crossbar bar lock Microtech introduced on the MSI, in frag-machined aluminum and Marfione Select titanium. Both come in drop point or tanto, with plain, partially serrated, and fully serrated edges across stonewash, apocalyptic, Cerakote, and Signature Series finishes, and the auto adds Marfione Select titanium and carbon fiber builds. See where M390MK lands in our comparison of every major knife steel.
LUDT vs Ultratech
The choice is mechanism first. The Ultratech is the double-action OTF, firing and retracting from the slide; the LUDT swings out the side with a push button and folds closed by hand, recocking the spring. The tradeoff favors the LUDT at the cutting board, because its wider blade and fuller slicing geometry do things an OTF's narrow blade cannot. Among side-opening automatic knives, this is the one that started Microtech, and if you want a burlier side opener, the Stitch is the next step up.
