It’s been said that the Insurrection was beneficial for the UNSC because it led to the UNSC developing tactics for space combat. However, humanity had warships before the insurrection. Did they simply not know how to use their fleet? Why didn’t they have a space combat doctrine before the Insurrection?
Because they didn’t really need it. There was the war with the faction that owned the Galilean Moons around Jupiter, but it’s clear that up until the Insurrection there hadn’t been a true war in space. It was all ground based.
I’d probably hazard a guess that at best, you’re looking at Expanse style space combat, where ships have to flip and turn using their engine and RCS thrusters to dance around targets. Fragile ships that really didn’t serve much of a purpose except hauling troops from one place to the other. When the Insurrection began in earnest, it encompassed defecting military officials, soldiers, military materiel including starships. So instead of just conducting ground operations they had to then adapt and push their technology forward and develop stuff like artificial gravity, which would allow for ship designs that didn’t have to conform to Newtonian physics.
And that’s just government and navy ships. If you look at the novel Contact Harvest, you’ll see that civilian ships are still very much no frills affairs that still largely conform to the laws of physics as opposed to the much more advanced UNSC navy ships. Less important and built for hauling cargo. The only civilian ships that we see that look different would be the civilian transports that get shot down in New Alexandria (and even then I’m not convinced they had their own Slipspace drives and instead would just dock with a larger transport in orbit).
Basically, tech wasn’t very advanced until rebels started stealing military ships, and the UNSC pushed it’s tech forward in order to maintain an edge over the Insurrection.
> 2533274838418174;2:
> Because they didn’t really need it. There was the war with the faction that owned the Galilean Moons around Jupiter, but it’s clear that up until the Insurrection there hadn’t been a true war in space. It was all ground based.
>
> I’d probably hazard a guess that at best, you’re looking at Expanse style space combat, where ships have to flip and turn using their engine and RCS thrusters to dance around targets. Fragile ships that really didn’t serve much of a purpose except hauling troops from one place to the other. When the Insurrection began in earnest, it encompassed defecting military officials, soldiers, military materiel including starships. So instead of just conducting ground operations they had to then adapt and push their technology forward and develop stuff like artificial gravity, which would allow for ship designs that didn’t have to conform to Newtonian physics.
>
> And that’s just government and navy ships. If you look at the novel Contact Harvest, you’ll see that civilian ships are still very much no frills affairs that still largely conform to the laws of physics as opposed to the much more advanced UNSC navy ships. Less important and built for hauling cargo. The only civilian ships that we see that look different would be the civilian transports that get shot down in New Alexandria (and even then I’m not convinced they had their own Slipspace drives and instead would just dock with a larger transport in orbit).
>
> Basically, tech wasn’t very advanced until rebels started stealing military ships, and the UNSC pushed it’s tech forward in order to maintain an edge over the Insurrection.
The ones in New Alexandria are too small to have slip-drives I’m pretty sure, at least, not ones that are reliable. I think they’re just surface-to-orbit transporters that dock with a larger ship like you said.
It’s mentioned they didn’t have MAC guns before the Insurrection. And, like others said, there was no need for warships without a war, and the UNSC hadn’t had to fight in space before.
Humanity was largely united and they were exploring the galaxy they didnt run into any advanced alien races until they ran into the covenant. There was little need for advanced ships with laser beams and shields. But the insurrection brought about many technological advances that would be crucial in the fight against the covenant. Titanium alloy armour. Better nukes and the MACS and SMACS all gave humanity some fighting chance. So the insurrection may have been a blessing in disguise.
I’ll throw my two cents in with the above posts. Humanity had a few hundred years of relative peace as they expanded into the stars. There were flare ups and hot spots that needed to be dealt with, but nothing on the level of full blown insurrection. This was largely due to the fact that more planets meant more resources and a better distribution of wealth and opportunity. But as humanity settled into the Orion Arm, many of the old issues started to rear their head again. People felt under-represented in the UEG, individual planets began to feel more fealty to their homeworlds rather than a distant world like Earth, and the physical distance between the outer colonies and the inner colonies led many to question whether or not the UEG was still a viable governing body.
When all those issues began to take shape, the insurrection was born and began taking bolder steps to gain independence from what they saw as an overreaching and illegitimate government. The UEG had to keep pace with their foes, and an escalation of offensive actions led to many of the technologies that are now considered commonplace. Mass drivers used to transport goods from land to space were fixed to star ships as weapons. Space combat got serious tactical attention from strategists on both sides. In general, the insurrection was a blessing in disguise because they showed the UEG that they had to increase their offensive capabilities if they wanted to keep their empire intact. Those offensive capabilities ended up being one of only a few key things that kept the Covenant War going as long as it did.
Were it not for the Covenant, humanity would likely have collapsed into a collection of independent planets and planetary systems all fighting for their own hegemonic power.