CKS on the dark side of IS

His take is basically that watchers like me have to be in certain denial:

If I take IS's background seriously I have to conclude that the whole 'IS military use is prohibited' thing is propaganda, and not very convincing propaganda at that. IS are armed, IS pilots are taught weapons and combat operation, competitions between IS pilots are combat duels instead of any number of other plausible tests of IS pilot skill, IS piloting seems heavily militarized, and so on. I can't think of a single non-combat use of IS we see in the entire series.

If I try hard, I can make the background covered on the Wikipedia .. make some sort of sense. Clearly 'IS will never be used in combat' is a highly unstable balance of power that no one expects to actually last once things get serious, so everyone is frantically trying to get powerful ISs and stockpiling trained pilots (and keeping a careful eye on each other).

Honestly, at first I thought that a lot of this styling was thoughtlessly carried over from Strike Witches, Sky Girls, et al. and is just adornments playing no role. To think otherwise were like claiming that boyscouts's training and rituals are born of some military-industrial complex conspiracy. But he's right. Considering the power of IS, stakes are too great.

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