Y'all genuinely act as if having Sentinals doesn't make perfect sense in the face of mutants like Magneto, Apocalypse, Stryfe, etc. The issue is that the Sentinels are then continually privately made by corporations and people that want to use them for villanous purposes, or to just plain kill all mutants.
Not really any different from the Superhuman Registration Act. Having superheroes registered and trained by the government so they can properly use their powers? Great, but then how to make absolutely certain that none of the evil geniuses in the world ever get into the database and leak all of that information?
I'll be honest I never liked sentinels. The concept always seemed dumb to me. An America where the gov't okays the use of giant robots hunting and abducting/killing unsuspecting Americans who just find out they're mutants was dumb and insane to me. (This aint an anti-machine thing cuz I love me some gundams
).
Yes Magneto is a real threat (I aint never seen mutants attack Apocalypse and lets be serious they wouldn't stand a chance. Stryfe could probably handle them too with his power set) but there must be a better response than that and there has been. It'd be much better if the gov't rounded up some mutants that were sick of Magneto making them look bad and genuinely supported them in trying to stop mutant terrorists (they sorta tried that with David's X-Factor) but there seems to be way too many racists in the gov't and/or racist lobbyists that are completely against mutant anything.
So that leads to all these independent groups making mass mutant killing machines.
They never said that was OK though. Any instantce where Sentinels have gone after mutants has either been in the face of dangerous mutants, which the average police officer wasn't going to be dealing with, the Sentinels themselves gaining some kind of omnipotence (Which was the entire reason Days of Future Past happened at all), or someone else pulling the strings (Like Nimrod and such) The Sentinels were only ever meant to be a counter/deterrent to protect people should these mutants that were popping up seek to use their powers for evil purposes. It makes perfect sense to me and came to be valuable down the line when they reached the point that the Sentinels were being piloted by military soldiers for such cases. Because an entire nation can't realistically be expected to count on costumed superheroes who at any given day might be off the planet dealing with some intergalactic incident.
Funding a goverment organization of mutants is a good job, but still doesn't completely erase the need for Sentinels, which can be easily mass produced, whereas the mutant team would only ever equal what? 10 or 15 on an ideal day? Sentinels are only seen as bad in the same way that the Registration is only seen as bad, because they're mainly used for bad storylines be neharious people.
It then devolves to a completely different conversation alltogether, about how closely the government should be monitoring its citizens, which leads to instances where you have certain organizations (Many times with people possessing genius level intellects and powers of their own) making their own Sentinels.
The American gov't in Marvel comics have had entire stories revolving around congress,senate, etc. voting to okay the use of sentinels. There have been times where they were totally allowed to operate on U.S.soil. In these stories the president at the time is usually never init but there's some high level gov't person calling the shots. So they definitely have directly or indirectly said it was ok.
Either way there's no justifying sentinels showing up and just taking Americans away cuz their powers are being used. I don't recall many comics where sentinels showed up to stop Sabertooth, the Hell Fire Club, Legion, or other threats. They're mainly used to go after X-Men, mutants that mean no harm, and Magneto and his brotherhood. They're always used in a way they do not show judgment between a regular mutant posing no threat, a mutant whose powers is out of control, and evil person using their mutant powers to kill. The whole point of the sentinels was to remove mutants from humanity. You say regular cops can't stop these mutants yes but that doesn't mean you okay sentinels. There's never been stories where sentinels have been illegally operating in America and the gov't set in some F16s to shoot them down.
To bring it to a global scale, sentinels were used to commit genocide on Genosha and the world's nations did nothing.
Just because some ppl have powers that may be dangerous the solution isn't create giant killing machines. Like I said it'd be much smarter to get mutants who want to help send the message that mutants aren't a threat once they're trained to go out and get mutants whose powers are out of control. Not killing robots.
Yes you could solely rely on mutants, they're thousands popping up everyday. There's never been a time where there were more sentinels than mutants. Saying it's easy to mass produce just sounds lazy. If this were the real world they'd be an insane waste of money. Furthermore, just like superheroes the sentinels don't do much protecting of humans. THey cause just as much destruction as superheroes. They're giant ******* robots shooting lasers and ****. They're not a necessity.
As for monitoring citizens, bump that. The gov. should've just asked Prof. X for cerebra or find some other genius that could make something similar and then use it to go recruit mutants as they emerge. They could have a mutant army in under a decade. If the American gov. in Marvel comics weren't so racist and hateful they'd end up being runaway supreme power in the world all over again but nah they'd rather spend time killing their potential resources.
Once more, in these stories, Sentinels aren't being sent out to hunt down and round up every mutant on the planet. They ok the use of Sentinels to defend the American people from dangerous mutants. And in terms of the goverment that's pretty much been the case since the Sentinels were introduced. There was even a point where they had a group of Sentinels posted right outside the X-Mansion. Not to attack the X-Men, but to keep an eye on them.
What you're saying doesn't happen. Sentinels don't just show up and take mutants away. The times when the actual government is sending Sentinels after the X-Men are few and far between, and in many cases comes from a misunderstanding. 9 times out of 10 its, as I previously stated, the Sentinels acting on their own a la Terminator (Master Mold, Nimrod, etc) or someone else besides the government sending his/her own Sentinels (Sebastian Shaw, Stephan Lang, etc.), or someone taking control of the Sentinels (Onslaught, Dark Beast, Loki, etc)
Sentinels have been used by the government to attack Kang the Conqueror when he was invading the planet. Incidents of Sentinels then operating tend to be wrapped up fairly quickly, and without any confirmation there's not even anything to say that the government is aware when these things are happening, as most times its not as if they're rampaging through New York or Washington. (It's like saying they should be sending in troops whenever Magneto and the X-Men are fighting, or when Green Goblins threatening to blow up a bridge. These events are small scale in teh grand scheme of the entire country and could not instantly be responded to by any means)
Genosha came about due to Professor Xavier's evil twin Cassandra Nova (An evil Mutant), sending her own Sentinels their to cause said Massacre. That's therefore not the cause of the U.S. government. Agreed on the U.S. then not helping afterwards, but seeing as Genosha is a foreign country, that also falls on the shoulders of every country in the world.
There are quite a few Mutants popping up, yet they either side with the X-Men or an organizations like the Brotherhood, or their powers just aren't the best for use in battle. Also, Sentinels were originally created when Mutants were just starting to show up in the public eye. Fear of Mutants was at an all time high. Therefore no one was going to be going out and forming a team of them. Afterwards the technology for Sentinels is then already in use by the goverment. And whatever else they may be, they're powerful and effective at doing their job, with the ability to distinguish between regular humans and mutants, something not even mutants can do. Unlike mutants they then don't need any training, just programming, and on average they don't actually require any person to risk his/her life to use them.
Everything else you're saying is then really only logical with knowledge of the future. The government didn't even know Xavier was a mutant when Sentinels came forth as an idea, an idea that the government as an organization didn't actually come up with. Trask did, which he then pitched to the government as a very real plan for protection. At best I think you could only argue that they also should've tried another alternate methods, such as bringing mutants into the fold down the line when they knew more about mutants and there were more mutants available.
Sentinels make just as much sense as having a mutant fighting task force made of mutants, or even a task force of superhumans just to counter mutants. There has literally never been an incident where the government sent out Sentinels and they then caused massive property damage or the loss of human lives. Every. Single. Time. It has been someone else, which also applies to the Genosha event, which is probably the most catastrophic use of the Sentinels, not counting Days of Future Past (Which also wasn't the government, but the Sentinels themselves) You could then argue that maybe they should have stopped messing with Sentinels altogether (Whereas they chose to keep working with them to perfect the technology, as did many other people), but saying that they have an agenda to destroy all Mutants is simply false. Hence you not seeing Sentinels constantly roving the skies at any time under the authority of the government and hunting mutants down, causing massacres left and right in every city in teh country.
