Why is Star Wars military tech so poor?

[Dabat]

This was origionally posted in a thread in the Other Sci-fi forum as a responce to another post. But after reading it again, I felt it belonged here.

Star Wars military technology, lets face it, sucks. Their weapons are short ranges and inaccurate. Their ships have glaring structural and strategic weaknesses. And their 'Grand Army of the Republic' was a mere 1.25 million strong. i know all of you must have asked, like i have, how can such a technologically advanced culture have such poor military equipment?

One answer is: They simply lost it.

It's not all that ridiculous when you think about it. The Republic had been at peace for, what? Three thousand years now? Assuming an average generational cycle of 25 years, that is 120 generations since that last period of large scale relative non-peace through the galaxy.

Think of it from the point of view of the the people in the Republic, even a mere hundred years after the last major war. "We've been at peace a century, we don't even have any soldiers left serving who can remember the war. Do we really need five million soldiers per world, when four million will do?" Or "Do we really need this giant ship when we can build one that is three quarters as long, and almost as good for half the cost?"

Translate that out over a few more generations, and you are likely to see military grade equipment start to disapear entirely. After all, why pay more for two different types of equipment when you can save money and equip everyone with the same thing? After all, that level of equipment is all anyone ever can recall having needed. Over time you will see smaller and smaller planetary armies which will look more and more like police units. In several you will likely see the military disapear all together, or at the very least be folded in with local police forces.

I am not saying that is what had to have happened in Star Wars. But it does go a long way towards explaning the lack of any significant military in the end of the Old Republic. It would also explane some of the glaring flaws in some of their ships (Notably the Star Destroyer needing massed cannon fire to hit a 150 m long ship barely 3 km away, not being able to shoot behind itself, etc..). Remember the golden rule about technology. It doesn't have to be the best that ever existed, it just has to be better then what the other guy has. You and I have are able to sit back and comment on the whole of their reality, but if we were someone to be living in that reality, and suddenly see an ISD for the first time? I bet we'd surrender without a fight. It is doubtful our home system has any dedicated military ships other then fighters, and even if we do, they can't stand up to an ISD.