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Your stance in honorable, but you are speaking of a particular item that you obviously are not familiar with. The Mirage X is not your everyday ceramic composite knife. Yes, you are right: most ceramic knives are brittle and thin, such as the Kyocera kind and kitchen knives. Mad Dog Mirage X knives are NOT brittle and will easily withstand knife combat. Try one out, you will be amazed.
I have had a number of Mirage X knives and used them as a daily item. I have also trained with them in the martial arts, hacking up cutting dummies, trees, you name it with NEVER a chip or break. In other words, I have whacked and stabbed the hell out of this knife and it has never broken or chipped. There is no fathomable reason in a knife defense encounter that the Mirage X would break.
It is not my first choice for a defensive knife, but then few concealable knives would please me for knife defense. But, for the role it plays, as a very concealable backup blade, the Mirage X is outstanding.
Mad Dog is making a pry bar out of this stuff to give you an idea of how tough it is. He does demos where he throws the ceramic knife as high as he can into the air, letting it crash down on pavement, and it almost never breaks the tip off. (There are not many STEEL knives that can withstand that abuse without losing their tip). He does demos where he leans on the knife. He says it has about the same consistancy as a steel file. It will not flex, and it will break, but you have to really work at it.
As Rich said, it is not a replacement for steel. Steel is preferred for most tasks. But, for the niche the Mirage X fills, it cannot be beat. If you need a non-magnetic, non-corrodable, flat and very concealable knife that will hold it's edge forever, then the Mirage X Operator or Micro is the best in the league.
[This message has been edited by jdthaddeus (edited December 16, 1999).]