Are the Gunners the descendants of the US Military? They seem like they could be like the Brotherhood if they went down a darker path.

They use proper military slang, have divided the commonwealth into sectors. Wear the colors, and have a Chain of command. They have access to huge amounts of hardware, like assualtrons and at least one vertibird. And they have ritualized some military things like dog tags by tattooing there blood type on their body.


They could just be a wannabe gang, but they seem far too organized.

Fallout wiki suggests that the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Gunners could be related to the US Military in some way but its speculation, no hard evidence that I know of. Supposedly they are mercenaries although apart from occasionally guarding a caravan they don't appear to have much paying work.

Theres considerable bad blood between them and the Minutemen.

Maybe they devolved into a war cult and see the Minutemen as encroaching on there lands.

Vault Experiment gone wrong in Medford Malden.

They are the results of a joint venture between Vault-Tec and the Army to breed Super Soldiers without FEV. Visit Medford Malden Middle School and do a little Looting.

I always thought that was a different thing going on. It seemed more focused on genetics than anything.

With the state of the Commonwealth, I wouldn't consider that a purely mercenary group in the numbers of the Gunners would be sustainable...particularly seeing they raid the people they would be getting jobs from. The other side of the coin is that they don't have settlements per se, nor kids. So, again, nothing more than a poorly backgrounded mob on the landscape, sadly.

There are very few children in game in general. It seems like they were meant to be more important at some point. I just take them as a war cult.

If you think about it, it is highly possible there was a quest where you could retake Quincy as MM chain - but later it was scrapped or something. There def is a small background story to the Gunners, where they explain how they were established to be such fit men & women. But they slacked a bit too much on their activities imo. They should've had a quest or two related to them atleast.

Don't forget Gunners also have proper artillery and tactical trap setups, whereas some Raiders usually still use pipe guns.

Who supplied the Gunners? Where did they get their tactical knowledge?

We need Other Factions DLC to let us reveal the Gunners' and Raiders' background story.

I feel that with the Military background the male SS should be snatched right up by them.

No one, they likely just found all their weapons like Talon Company did by raiding an old military base or two. TC had artillery as well.

And basic combat tactics aren't exactly had to figure out, you dont need to be trained on them really, you just need to have a bunch of people who listen.