Timeline for answer to Why would a near future, interstellar empire still have military units/divisions using ‘antique’ weapons (Cavalry, bolt-action rifles, long bayonets)? by Monty Wild
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
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24 events
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| Feb 7, 2025 at 9:54 | comment | added | sirtao | I'll also add that "Back-to-Basic" weaponry is not the same as "primitive" weaponry. A bolt-action rifle made with modern know-how and designed to be as easy to build&repair as possible would still be VESTLY better than even just a, say, late-1800 one. Plus, Doctor Doom's Handgun: sometime a threat is better conveyed through low-tech if the target of the threat is too culturally underdeveloped to appreciate the lethal finesse of a molecular discombulator. | |
| Feb 7, 2025 at 2:07 | comment | added | John | @Colombo please don't answer in comments. | |
| Feb 6, 2025 at 22:41 | comment | added | Colombo | They come and win the war. Colonists are shipped with basic high-tech foundry and machinery to refine basic resources and create new machinery. But after that, you need troops in there to keep the land and have occasional skirmish against locals. Your crack troops are expensive. Local self-replicating soldiers riding self-replicating horses with locally made equipment are cheap, you basically do not need to invest at them at all. You can even recruit some natives and give them this local weaponry. If they start building some high-tech infrastructure, you can just bomb them from space. | |
| Feb 6, 2025 at 22:38 | comment | added | Colombo | As a result, most worlds develop a bunch of low-tech tools to solve issues. Basic bullets and guns are sufficiently easy to develop with some knowledge and some startup tools, and typically do not require high purity of materials (as long as the gunpowder gun wont blow in your hand). Horses feed themselves, or from locally sourced food (grass), multiply by themselves, and do not require crude oil or spare parts (just get another horse when your one stops working). You can conjure the same reasons for your Empire of Earth. You have crack troops from earth equipped with high-tech stuff. | |
| Feb 6, 2025 at 22:33 | comment | added | Colombo | Firefly (Sci-Fi Western) had this well explained. Interstellar travel is not cheap, takes a long time, and new colonies do not have that much to offer to the high-tech core worlds until they are sufficiently advanced. Food can be grown in glass houses more efficiently than on different world and then transported via FTL, and you can collect plenty of space objects for minerals without having to fight any Gs. So what would expansionist empire do? Send a bunch of colonists and leave them on their own to develop the world, with occasional transport delivering critical supplies like medicine. | |
| Feb 6, 2025 at 13:34 | comment | added | Monty Wild♦ | @John My answer is no doubt the justification that someone in command but without a lot of battlefield experience would decide to implement. If you recall, I said that this answer fits the OP's requirements for an answer, not that I think that it's a good idea. I happen to agree with you. However, orders are orders, and the poor front-line grunts have to follow them. If they're sent this stuff, that's what they have to use, like it or not. | |
| Feb 6, 2025 at 13:11 | comment | added | John | @MontyWild and if you think men on horse back with bolt action rifles modern armor and grenades are still far far more at risk and far less effective than soldiers with modern rifles, vehicles, modern armor, grenades you should study some military history. replacing trained troops costs more than basic equipment. also using inferior weapons just increases the chance of what you have getting captured so you just keep upgrading your opponents. | |
| Feb 5, 2025 at 17:36 | comment | added | Nathan Wycoff | Since no one has said it explicitly, maybe it's worth mentioning that the war in Ukraine is an ongoing example of this kind of thing happening in reality: we have units using cutting edge modern equipment on some parts of the front and early cold war tanks and artillery on the other parts due to equipment shortages. Not quite cavalry and spaceships but it illustrates the dynamic. | |
| Feb 5, 2025 at 15:59 | comment | added | Codes with Hammer | "Despoilers of the Golden Empire" had the same supply issue: The troops used swords as much as possible to conserve the charges of their power-carbines; the expedition had only the supply they brought with them, and no ability to resupply on request. Communication and transportation time was at least several weeks in each direction. | |
| Feb 5, 2025 at 14:17 | comment | added | Mohirl | There's also the danger that the weapons you bring could end up in your enemy's hands. If you restrict yourself to moderately superior weapons, you still have the big guns to fall back on if the locals somehow storm your arsenal. | |
| Feb 5, 2025 at 11:33 | vote | accept | Malachi | ||
| Feb 5, 2025 at 2:35 | comment | added | Monty Wild♦ | @John The British soldiers in the Zulu war didn't have modern armour or grenades. I've tried to justify the OP's request for a reason for these early weapons, even though I don't entirely agree with it myself. However, REMFs make decisions that the soldiers have to put up with. | |
| Feb 5, 2025 at 2:30 | comment | added | John | If you think "primitves" can't kill men with bolt action rifles I suggest you look up the "zulu war" the very limited speed of a bolt action rilfe makes them vunerable to being overwhelmed far easier. | |
| Feb 5, 2025 at 2:23 | comment | added | Monty Wild♦ | @John That's why they would have modern armour. Remember that they would be facing complete primitives if they were issued with bolt action rifles and bayonettes. The bolt action rifles would use the same ammunition as every other rifle. | |
| Feb 5, 2025 at 2:21 | comment | added | John | having many kinds of weapons makes costs go up, and soldiers have to cost more than bullets and assault rifles, and using inferior weapons means you lose a lot more soldiers. | |
| Feb 5, 2025 at 2:15 | comment | added | John | modern assault rifles do not encourage spray and pray, And melee weapons just waste your soldiers. If bullets are too expsinive to ship or more likely manufacture humans must be far more costly. | |
| Feb 5, 2025 at 1:51 | comment | added | Monty Wild♦ | @Malachi, edit 2 is up... just for a bit more of a reason. | |
| Feb 5, 2025 at 1:50 | history | edited | Monty Wild♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Feb 5, 2025 at 1:41 | comment | added | Monty Wild♦ | @Malachi I've had a lot of practise typing... I've typed well over a million words in my career. | |
| Feb 5, 2025 at 1:38 | comment | added | Malachi | Christ, you wrote all of that extremely fast. And, re-reading your answer, that all makes sense now. Thank you! | |
| Feb 5, 2025 at 1:33 | comment | added | Monty Wild♦ | @Malachi Have a look at my edit. | |
| Feb 5, 2025 at 1:33 | history | edited | Monty Wild♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Feb 5, 2025 at 1:13 | comment | added | Malachi | Reducing ammunition usage when fighting on an alien planet, when resources of all kinds are very limited, does make a lot of sense. But (maybe I should have made this more pronounced in the question) not the entirety of the GLA is equipped with such weapons. The vast majority of its soldiers do have modern assault weapons, that do have full-automatic firemodes. | |
| Feb 5, 2025 at 0:45 | history | answered | Monty Wild♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |