There should be no shame in being an Upham, as most of us haven't been trained in the ways of war. And to quote the average Martha Stewart, 'that is a good thing'.
Madness string 111770
Any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic. Ultimately the determining feature is how well it's understood in practice, or in retrospect. If a thousand years later nobody still understands it and has made no progress toward understanding it, maybe it is magic... or maybe they're just idiots.