Footwear choices are determined by a couple of things. Neither one particularly related to intimidation value.
- Few military uniforms specify sneakers as duty footwear. Primarily, athletic
gear. And sometimes onboard submarines. Or, rarely,
small boat operations.
- Boots are part of the uniform of the day. And are included on a lot of
small boat operations for the same reason they're worn shipboard. Foot & ankle protection.
Ships are metal, as are doorways, & hatches. So kicking, or bumping into them, or bulkheads etc. if/when moving at even walking speeds can be pretty painful. If not injurious.
And when boarding one vessel from another, there's a very real possibility of getting one's foot or leg snagged in the gap between the two. Be it the ship's
tender & the (steel) ship, or the
tender, & your (hard) vessel. So every little bit of protection helps.
Consider too that the young
men &
women doing these operations generally have very, very little time onboard small boats. Much less than you do. And so aren't familiar with how they move. Plus they're likely to be keyed up on adrenaline, so much so that it's easy to misstep, & or step more heavily than was intended (& not even notice doing so).
Plus, they're wearing, & carrying a significant amount of
equipment a lot of the time during such
events. Which adds to the heavy feet thing.
Just try wearing a helmet of any significance around for a length of time. Your ability to be lith will no doubt suffer. And it's not just due to the weight or fatigue. Your hearing, vision, inherent inner ear stability, etc. suffer too.
Then strap on; body armor, a life jacket, weapons, first aid
gear, flashlights, uniforms... Along with that idea in the back of your
head that you might get shot at. But that you still have to be "polite". Plus a dozen other, obvious things, & 2 dozen+ non-obvious ones. And some of the why behind the way things go during boardings becomes evident.
PS: Most folks in uniform at sea routinely
work 20hrs a day, often more. So that does tend to alter one's actions, & interactivity. And to be blunt, they put your peace of mind, & tendency to see them as jackboots at the forefront of what governs their behavior. Vs. their own personal
safety, & or conducting their jobs with maximum efficacy. Since one incident of bad press ruins the careers of a whole lot of people, in seconds. Whether they were acting correctly, & in a situationally warranted fashion or not.
Which, BTW, politicians write a lot of their behavioral scripts for such drills, military correctness & necessity quite often take a back seat during the drafting of doctrine, & execution of such proceedures & encounters.
Your safety, & emotional sensibilities get put far, far above their safety. Even if it may not seem like it.
Think about how dangerous just a traffic stop is for Law Enforcement. A situation where backup is at most 2 min away. And if things go bad, it's easy to put distance & metal in between the good guys, & the bad guys.
But at sea, what are the good guys (boarding party's) options? Yeah, few, & awful. At best.