Faulty Weapons

[Agent Awesome]

Uh, isn't it weird that Providence soldiers' guns don't even deal enough damage to EVOs?

Why don't they upgrade?

[Sirenitie]

Because they're the red shirts and henchmen. They need to provide some sort of air of futility so the hero can bust in being all awesome and show off how cool he is. After all, if the grunts were relatively competent, it'd be pretty anticlimactic for Rex to get the call to come in, and when he shows up everything's been taken care of, right?

I'm thinking that since the hardiness of EVOs vary by leaps and bounds, they try not to break out the big guns until they really have to for safety's sake because of civilians and the like. Unfortunately, by the time they have to, it seems that they don't have access to those big guns... >>; Hmm.

[Solora Goldsun]

The same reason why the Plumbers in B10 don't upgrade their tech so that criminals don't keep sneaking past them in plain sight every other episode:

They're all MORONS!!!!!

[Cole MacGrath]

/Stormtrooper effect

EVOs battled by Providence are usually giant monsters who can take a lot of punishment. You don't go up against an armored vehicle with an assault rifle. You go for air support, flanking with heavy weapons, etc.

Still, they were able to repell VK's grunts in "Payback", so I guess they deserve a round of applause every now and then.

[Aenrhien]

If the Red Shirts could handle everything themselves, then Rex, Six and very likely Doctor Holiday would be out of jobs. Then you have to take into account that most of the EVOs they encounter turn out to have been civilians; using heavy weaponry on them would run the risk of being responsible not only for the death of the person who went EVO, but very likely a few people that happen to be in the area. If Providence is a government funded agency, them killing that many people on a regular basis would probably result in them losing their funding or being shut down completely.

[macgaulyver]

The red shirts and their ineffective weapons exist solely to make our heroes look good. I support their very existence for this reason alone:-)