What would it take for melee weapons to make sense...

[biostem]

I'm trying to think of an air-tight reason why melee weapons would return to primary use in a Sci-Fi setting - I'm not talking about things like using knives for utilitarian purposes - I'm talking about a high-tech setting where swords, maces, axes, spears, and so on, have returned to main/common use among soldiers & armies.

Within this setting, both chemical propellants and directed energy weapons would still exist. There does exist powered armor, but it tends to be bulky, (too big to fit through a standard sized door), and is rather expensive.

The only rationale that I could come up with is if personal defense technology could neutralize most ranged attacks, but allow close-in ones to still affect the wearer, (kind of like the shields from Dune).

What do you guys think? Is it just a pipe-dream that requires a significant suspension of disbelief?

[The Romulan Republic]

Guns and explosives could be dangerous to use aboard a spacecraft due to the risk of damaging the hull and/or vital equipment, so boarding actions could see melee weapons being used.

[Batman]

IIRC the shields from Dune didn't negate ranged attacks, they just nixed high speed ones (which would be relatively easy to circumvent while keeping ranged weapons-as was shown in the Lynch Dune movie). Offhand I'd say your best bet would be defenses that are awesome at stopping high speed low mass attacks (i.e. slugthrower projectiles) but not so hot at stopping high mass low speed attacks (melee weapons) and I suspect even that is easy enough to work around in a SciFi setting.

[Batman]

Guns and explosives could be dangerous to use aboard a spacecraft due to the risk of damaging the hull and/or vital equipment, so boarding actions could see melee weapons being used.

Hollowpoints, slow-burning and fragment-easy explosives, slow projectiles and frankly the waah! We blew a hole in the hull problem has long been vastly overstated in SciFi. Oh woe is us. There's a 1 cm diameter hole in the hull and now there's a 1 atmosphere pressure differential. What can we possibly do in the rather considerable time before this compartment becomes depressurized?

[Sea Skimmer]

It will never actually work, ever. Basic math will defeat it if not the billion other problems. The ranged weapon, the explosive weapon, the mine, ect... is truly powerful not because it might or might not be better or more lethal in 1:1 combat. Its better because it increases the area of influence of the user on the battlefield by massive levels over any possible melee weapon. The concentration of force at the decisive point thus overwhelmingly shifts in favor of modern arms. Which is why everyone adapted them even though they've only gotten ever more expensive, while melee weapons only get cheaper. Even at very close ranges a gun or grenade has a huge advantage in area of influence. In fact it isn't for nothing that many modern weapons are more limited by minimal ranges then maximum ranges, the origin of hugging tactics, getting too close to an enemy for them to employ mortars or artillery or sometimes even fragmentation grenades. But even that combat doesn't lead to extensive bayonet fights. About 99% of the time, even in the first world war before people had many personal automatic weapons, it just led to vicious close quarter gun and grenade battles. Because modern weapons will let you repel a massed attack even at a distant of ten feet if you have a good position. A sword? Rather less so. Because the enemy had to get within maybe six feet before you could swing it.

The general result of increased area of influence is the dispersal of forces away from massed ranks, which in ~2014 has reached the point of people controlling combat machines from the far side of the planet. This also makes melee combat much harder to pull off, even if you had an effective weapon. You'd waste too much time physically getting close to each enemy to stab them when even each enemy infantry position is 300m apart.

If you want melee weapons in a modern setting you are going to have to invoke some kind of arbitrary magic line in the sand and it will create logical problems you will never resolve. You want that? Then do it. Plain and simple. Dune is complete failure at logical resolutions, its shields would cause high speed tankdozers to dominate warfare, not knives. It is not thought out logically at all, but the author just made some claims and then ran with them, and at least as far as writing success goes it was very effective.

So the real issue is how do you make a story interesting enough that the average or target reader doesn't care about that obvious line in the sand being drawn. Then just go for it. You start trying to come up with elaborate explanations, it will fail.

[Zeropoint]

You could possibly have strong cultural reasons for melee combat. Heck, in the anime series "Outlaw Star", there are cases of starships engaging in melee combat, which makes no tactical sense whatsoever . . . except that prowess at spaceship hand to hand combat (yes, you read that right) is considered an absolute necessity for any self-respecting Outlaw. Social pressures could lead to both sides in a conflict voluntarily restricting themselves to less effective weapons in fights where social status is as important as tactical objectives.

Another possibility is a legal environment wherein weapons are prohibited, but potentially dangerous tools are still available.

Hmm, having checked the first post in this thread again, you're asking for something that would make melee weapons the first choice for actual military use. I have to agree with the other posters that realistically, NOTHING is going to put the genie of ranged combat back in the bottle.

[biostem]

I have to be honest - I don't like the "fight in melee for honor" reasons. I just feel that in any "real" setting, those involved would use any means at their disposal in order to win, (short of WMDs that, if used, would get them wiped out as well).

That gives me an idea - what if, in this setting, there was some extremely powerful faction that imposed some sort of ban on ranged weapons - such that if used, they'd wipe out the offending party straight away? I suppose framing the enemy as using these, or simply being good at hiding that you use them, would be more of a focus.

If the setting were moved to be only planet-scale, instead of involving space travel, would some sort of super-dense and perpetual fog, or extensive foliage that blocks any kind of long-range target acquisition, be feasible? What about an environment that was very low in oxygen/oxidizers, so gunpowder and explosives didn't work well?

Thanks again for your input.

[Eulogy]

I can only think of two things, in addition to what's been already said:

1. No supplies or spare parts. The army could be marooned on some backwater planet, or it's a desperate last ditch attack and all the ammo is already gone/stolen/lost. If a military finds itself in that situation often enough (someone comically incompetent is in charge, and they cannot yet get rid of him, for example), it could find its rank-and-file sneaking melee weapons into their possession. It's better than no weapon at all.

2. The sword/axe/mace etc. IS the ranged weapon. This is sci-fi; who says you can't have a spear that you can throw at a target very far away, hit it, and have it return to you? Depending on the weapon and what modifications it has, it can be very good at what it does indeed.

[mr friendly guy]

I think Skimmer hit it right on the head. You just need to make it sound sort of plausible, and your storytelling abilities will carry the rest.

Off the top of my head just go with some technobabble. For example

1. Your countermeasure can make artillery explode from a distance. Due to the inverse square rule the explosion does no damage from those rangers. And if you try coming in closer to fire, the countermeasure will detonate the shell/rpg/ whatever and hurt you.

2. Technobabble material makes powered armour making you resistant to energy, laser based weapons through refraction, technobabble blah blah blah. Said material can still be pierced by vibro swords.

[Purple]

If you want melee weapons in a modern setting you are going to have to invoke some kind of arbitrary magic line in the sand and it will create logical problems you will never resolve. You want that? Then do it. Plain and simple. Dune is complete failure at logical resolutions, its shields would cause high speed tankdozers to dominate warfare, not knives. It is not thought out logically at all, but the author just made some claims and then ran with them, and at least as far as writing success goes it was very effective.

I was under the impression that it was not just the shields but the fact that shipping military hardware through space is so expensive. As in that everyone would just have used tankdozers but they can't pay the guild enough to bring over a large shipment of them. Not to mention that they would get eaten up on the sand.

You could possibly have strong cultural reasons for melee combat. Heck, in the anime series "Outlaw Star", there are cases of starships engaging in melee combat, which makes no tactical sense whatsoever . . . except that prowess at spaceship hand to hand combat (yes, you read that right) is considered an absolute necessity for any self-respecting Outlaw. Social pressures could lead to both sides in a conflict voluntarily restricting themselves to less effective weapons in fights where social status is as important as tactical objectives.

Thing is that this sounds very unrealistic. Historically such trends did exist but they usually always revolved around things that were actually useful. Something like what you describe would just never happen in real life outside maybe a dueling context.


Honestly, if you want to use melee weapons in combat I think your only option is to go for the age old warrior spirit thing. As in, maybe your army is fighting some sort of demons or stuff that can only be slain in combat by a blade wielded by a true warrior of pure heart or something. So you get legions of these highlander style guys with swords facing down hordes of enemies.

[AniThyng]

Or just go warhammer and note that enemies are just that tough that some will close to bayonet range...

[Napoleon the Clown]

Just go for broke and say that the societies involved base their tactics off what they think is "cool." Sure, shooting people is damn effective. But going toe-to-toe against each other in melee combat? That's just fucking badass, man! Make it fun to read or watch and people really won't give a shit why people eschew a more effective weapon.

[madd0ct0r]

everyone is blind

[Eternal_Freedom]

I tihnk another good reason why melee weapons fell outof favour was the training required. Consider, you can take an ordinary citizen, shove a rifle in his hands and in a few weeks can teach him to be a reasonably effective shooter.

Now try doing that with swords/axes/maces. A few weeks of training isn't enough to become competent enough with such weapons to let you reliably fight on a battlefield.

[Batman]

What about an environment that was very low in oxygen/oxidizers, so gunpowder and explosives didn't work well?

Irrelevant. Gunpowder and explosives carry their own oxidizer. They'd work just as happily in a vacuum.

[Purple]

Now try doing that with swords/axes/maces. A few weeks of training isn't enough to become competent enough with such weapons to let you reliably fight on a battlefield.

On the other hand a spear and shield combo is rather forgiving. It is my understanding that you can get even a peasant militia with minimal training into a spear and shield shieldwall and they will be quite effective.

[Joun_Lord]

Just go for broke and say that the societies involved base their tactics off what they think is "cool." Sure, shooting people is damn effective. But going toe-to-toe against each other in melee combat? That's just fucking badass, man! Make it fun to read or watch and people really won't give a shit why people eschew a more effective weapon.

To add to that and to make it work in setting, have most combat be a future space version of Gladiator combat. Fighting is still done for resources, land, or whatever but rather then the winner being whoever clobbers the other guys instead they have a judging system. To avoid costly, WMD driven wars that would cause mass death and suffering, a group of nations came together to form a fighting alliance that decrees that combat will no longer be fought as it was but in small scale engagements away from civilians in specially prepared fields that will be judged by a panel of nobles drawn from all the nations and transmitted for all the alliance to see.

Combat is more like a sport now with judges more likely to give favor to armies that look impressive even if they aren't in practice. So one army can be decked in in drab body armor armed with rifles going against an army of brightly dressed dandies armed with swords and axes. The smart army of course cleans the floor with them but loses because the bright army looked more impressive while fighting, they were like a peacock dancing with beautiful grace and poise with their weapons while the other guys were a brown smudge that stood still and made little pews, not ever interesting to watch.

Thus "show" armies come into being. They still have normal brown smudge pew armies but are only used against outside threats. It helps the alliance too against stupid enemies who only see the transmissions of these ridiculously ineffective armies fighting and assumes thats what their entire military is.

[Purple]

You do realize the obvious flaw in your plan right? The first time someone rolls out with a boring modern looking army and massacres the other side they win. That's it, it's over. Sure they technically lost what ever the battle was being fought over. But there is no way in hell that anyone is ever going to agree to go to battle against them voluntarily. No one is going to volunteer to go to a battle where victory can only be gained by certain death.

And besides, you can fancy up a machine gun so that it's just as pretty as a sword. So you'll just end up with legions of peacocking modern armies.

[Joun_Lord]

To win the battle they don't need to actually win the battle, hence the judges. Its less combat and more a parade where people die. A dog show with soldiers where the judges judge them on looks and grace. The judges are bored aristocrats more interested in fashion then military stuff so thats what they would be judging. Swordsmen and other melee fighters actually have to go out and perform moves and junk like a ballet, where some guy with a gun stands there pewing, again not very impressive to snobbish snobs. Compare like a kendo or fencing competition to a shooting competition, the former is more impressive to watch.

And people would still fight even if they are technically losing either by loyalty to their nation (queen and country and all that jazz) or just being paid handsomely enough. In olden days soldiers would literally march into slaughters without pause. Some people would fought as gladiators in Rome just for the fame of it, something that might happen in this setting with the battles being televised. Criminals and slaves can be forced even if nobody else would fight.

Go with the honor bullcrap even. Sure the guys that get slaughtered......get slaughtered but they do so honorably, fashionably, and in a manner that brings honor and victory to their nation. The other side maybe alive but they are losers and cowards.

[Purple]

And people would still fight even if they are technically losing either by loyalty to their nation (queen and country and all that jazz) or just being paid handsomely enough. In olden days soldiers would literally march into slaughters without pause. Some people would fought as gladiators in Rome just for the fame of it, something that might happen in this setting with the battles being televised. Criminals and slaves can be forced even if nobody else would fight.

It's quite different to go into a situation with very high lethality and to go into one where death is absolutely certain. Humans are great at rationalizing and basically fooling them self into thinking that even if 9 out of 10 people are to die it will be those other 9 and not you. And once you do that than you ain't marching to death but to glorious victory.
But under these conditions the soldiers are basically being told in no uncertain terms that 10 out of 10 will die. And worse yet that their commanders intentionally decided that this is to be so in order for a goal to be achieved.

[Ziggy Stardust]

It's quite different to go into a situation with very high lethality and to go into one where death is absolutely certain.

Hey, it's science fiction. Make the combat some sort of simulation, Holodeck style, so nobody ACTUALLY dies. Problem solved.

[Purple]

It's quite different to go into a situation with very high lethality and to go into one where death is absolutely certain.

Hey, it's science fiction. Make the combat some sort of simulation, Holodeck style, so nobody ACTUALLY dies. Problem solved.

Now that is a good idea.

[LaCroix]

Or... you could start with the people. If they are highly capable of regeneration (race, nano-symbionts, whatever), a hole or a couple of holes isn't enough to stop them, so bullets are useless and a beam weapon will simply burn through and hit something behind them, but the guy will keep going and maybe be fine, again, a few seconds later, and only a headshot or massive tissue damage will bring them down for keeps.

Solutions?

You could ramp up beam power, but it will still only mean that you do more damage to whatever is behind them, and a hand-held continous beam weapon that could be used to cut the enemy apart might be very expensive/potentially dangerous to yourself/heavy/impossible due to technical restrictions, thus rare or non-existent.

Increasing slug size doesn't help much, so you are may start using explosive bullets in oversized guns. Going with real life applications, these guns are going to be heavy. Maybe not very accurate, and/or single-shot to prevent jams and blow-ups. Also, you are, in fact, carrying lots of bombs on your body and thus are more vulnerable to enemy fire than the ones you are shooting at, because you will now blow up when hit by a beam weapon, but still need multiple good hits to bring someone down.

But having fast chargers using shields (mostly against incoming bullets) and melee weapons to cut off limbs and heads will make more sense in that setting, in a "combined weapons" way. Or the simple fact that once you are in close quarters, shooting is less usefull than melee, so people will carry blades for that.

[Purple]

Or far more realistically in such a situation everyone will just start sporting these.

It's all fine and well that your enemy is alive if his limbs are somewhere in a field 50m away from his head.

Furthermore, it does not solve the fact that most kills in modern warfare are not made by bullets but aircraft, tanks and artillery. SO even if we go your way you'd still end up with an army made of sword wielding guys supported by tanks firing HE.

[Simon_Jester]

I have to be honest - I don't like the "fight in melee for honor" reasons. I just feel that in any "real" setting, those involved would use any means at their disposal in order to win, (short of WMDs that, if used, would get them wiped out as well).

The main reason for this is Darwinian. It's not that there aren't people willing to restrict their own side in bizarre ways over legalistic quibbles in the face of a shooting war. If nothing else, British quartermasters in the Crimea proved that.

The problem is that in the face of a serious war, people who act that way are seen as grossly incompetent by their own side, because their actions result in losing the war. Thus, there is a powerful selection pressure against them and the mindset they represent. Which is pretty much what happened in the Crimean War; after the war the British enacted a slew of reforms intended to make sure their army would never bungle that comprehensively ever again.

That gives me an idea - what if, in this setting, there was some extremely powerful faction that imposed some sort of ban on ranged weapons - such that if used, they'd wipe out the offending party straight away?

The extremely powerful faction would themselves have no experience with ranged weapons, and would therefore be hideously vulnerable to rebels with guns. They would soon cease to be powerful, and lose the ability to destroy rebels with guns.

Unless, of course, the powerful faction is equipped with the full range of modern weapons, and is enforcing this arbitrary ban on ranged weapons within a restricted area of conflict. For one example of this, see the "alien combines abduct/hire human mercenaries to fight with low-tech weapons" genre. On the other hand, this only works in the context of what is essentially a sporting event: two sides that have massive, far-reaching capabilities have agreed to use only a very restricted subset of those capabilities, within a limited arena defined by mutual agreement or by a third party.

I was under the impression that it was not just the shields but the fact that shipping military hardware through space is so expensive. As in that everyone would just have used tankdozers but they can't pay the guild enough to bring over a large shipment of them. Not to mention that they would get eaten up on the sand.

In the first novel this is arguably true of Dune in particular, although given the sheer size of Guild freighters, it cannot possibly be that hard to ship a bulldozer in.

The sand is more of an issue. Also, the bulldozers would only be relevant in a pitched battle, because they cannot easily maneuver in rocky terrain, and cannot enter a structure. Except by, well, bulldozing it.

Or just go warhammer and note that enemies are just that tough that some will close to bayonet range...

Thing is, under what circumstances will your bayonet be an effective weapon against an enemy your machine gun couldn't stop? That's not likely to happen much.

There is a vaguely justified case when you are protected by ultra-tough armor and fighting hordes of enemies that cannot realistically penetrate that armor, at close quarters- i.e. Space Marines in room to room fighting against normal human soldiers that lack antitank weapons. However, that's still unlikely to justify not carrying a gun.

I tihnk another good reason why melee weapons fell outof favour was the training required. Consider, you can take an ordinary citizen, shove a rifle in his hands and in a few weeks can teach him to be a reasonably effective shooter.

Now try doing that with swords/axes/maces. A few weeks of training isn't enough to become competent enough with such weapons to let you reliably fight on a battlefield.

Well, you could teach someone enough in a few weeks to make them very dangerous with a sword or spear to untrained persons. The thing is that training with melee weapons cancels itself out: if you have six months' training and your opponent has five years' training, you will lose every time. But that advantage they have is lost when your own five-year training recipients show up.

Thus, if you have a limited time to make soldiers out of your recruits with melee weapons, while you could make them objectively dangerous, you cannot make them objectively dangerous to members of a career military aristocracy that has, on average, better equipment and far more training.