User blog comment:Braveangel/About planetary defenses/@comment-2006054-20100423082535

Then the final battle of ME1 is inconsistent with the in-game own Codex. I replayed the final battle and lo! the cruisers fired but only occasionally. It is the smaller fighters that bombarded the shield of Sovereign with barrage of blue glowing kinetic torpedoes (as opposed to the red glow of the cruisers' bow guns). And we know that kinetic barriers go down to barrage of rapid firing missiles (from fighter ships, as well as from sub-machine guns), not to high-impact energy shots.

Maybe you're right about the "'head in the sand, we know it all' arrogant behavior" of the Council races. Maybe it's like the folly of the Romans when faced against the Ottomans in the 15th century. Or the French, with their Maginot Line in WW II. It may never occurred to the Council that there are powers greater than themselves.

Though how they never learn from their near defeat by the rachni, and then the krogan, and a narrow escape from total annihilation by the tentacles of Sovereign, escapes me.