What the deal with swords

[justacaveman]

Here's one explantion for use of Cutlasses in the Imperial Marines.

Prize money! The Imperium was started as a Merchant Federation. They offered prize money for captured ships. The use of melee weapons allows the heavily armored Marines to capture pirate/enemy ships with minimal damage to certain areas of the ship such as the bridge and engineering etc.. If the fleet has to send a tow vessel out to recover the ship, the prize money would be reduced. The ship could even be gone when they got back.

There are many expensive fragile electronic components in certain areas of the ship that would be quite difficult to replace.

A significant amount of a Marines retirement income may come from prize money.

 

[marginaleye]

Another possibility, re. the sword-usage:
At some point in its past, the Third Imperium recruited a large fraction of its marines from primitive planets, where swords were still used in earnest. Soldiers from primitive planets would be (a) more politically reliable, since they had no ties to densely populated, technologically advanced, "important" worlds, and would be (b) disposable (the inhabitants of the Imperium's "important" worlds wouldn't be disturbed by their friends and relatives dying in the dirty little wars of empire-building and -maintenance). The Imperium may, or may not, still be recruiting primitives, but it the tradition of sword-usage just "stuck."

 

[dnacowboy]

A couple of sidebar comments:

During WWII and Korea, a considerable number of injuries were inflicted on the enemy with entrenching tools, you know those little shovels you always see on the backs of US soldiers in old movies. The handle provides some reach, the entire shovel blade is a deadly weapon, and just about anyone can learn how to use one on the fly.

Also during Vietnam, the US military reintroduced the tomahawk. I've talked to a couple of guys from there who swore by them. Makes sense as a standard Vietnamese tactic to reduce the effectiveness of US firepower was to close with our troops as quickly as possible to engage in hand to hand combat. I believe General Giap refered to it as "hugging their belts." (could be wrong on that)

Training with sword could be a good idea, because even Marines in battledress might be reluctant to call orbital artillery down on their own positions.

 

[BType]

OTOH close-in fighting does still tend to devolve into an unorganised melee, and possession of melee weapon skills remains a very valuable asset for the modern soldier.
Unfortunately, this doesn't justify the use/equipping of cutlasses, which require several feet of clear space to use. Knives, bayonets, and clubs are much more likely - I saw an exhibition of WW1 infantry clubs at the Imperial War Musuem in London recently, scary things - most soldiers of course will resort to using their rifle as a club, which may be a problem with delicate high-tech weapons.

The US Marines' favoured shipboard weapon, the Remington pump-action shotgun, is a nice heavy bit of metal to whack someone with in an emergency and is less likely to break than a semi-auto. I guess if the Imperial marines' gauss or laser rifles cannot be effectively used as melee weapons (eg too fragile to use with a bayonet), that would sort-of justify the cutlass training, although a nice monofilament-bladed dagger would be better for the close-in stuff.

There's another reason to favor using melee weapons: basically, "modern" troops in the Imperium are in VASTLY heavier armored protection then modern troops, to the point where that with decent Combat Armor modern conventional firearms can't do crap to them because their guns just aren't powerful enough to penetrate them. You need things like gauss weapons, lasers, etc.
Now the same kind of raw killing power that makes gaussian weapons and lasers practical armor-killing weapons unfortunately makes them really vulnerable to interior ship systems and over penetration basically.
Advanced melee weaponry, such as monomolecular blades and vibroweaponry and stuff like that can neither overpenetrate or damage ship systems, but they CAN given the appropriate technological advantaged pierce or cleave through armor, especially if they're things like hi-tech boarding axes or whatever.
I'm not saying they would always be used, but in mid TL (10-13) civilizations I'm betting there's a crapload of blood being splattered everywhere in boarding actions, akin to those battles in Legend of Galactic Heroes.