It's just another reason to not play in Rheinland, and it is an objective disservice to the traditional themes of Freelancer. It's just one of those things unique to Discovery, where things with no factual backing or inherent logic will occur simply because people want them to occur. I'm not saying that's bad because even base Freelancer took some liberties with what was rational, but it established a well defined structure among all factions despite this. Discovery freely allows people to erode that structure, that's why this exists.
The problem with the Unioners in general is that there is an extremely minimal amount of insight that vanilla provides about the group, their motivations and methods. But what little is there seems to suggest focused motivation, but of the brutal variety. Since I'm going to get accused of potential bias, let me also address the fact that the Hessians are also a perpetrator of Discovery erosion and if we went by the themes of the group then they would be nowhere near a professional military. The Hessians were a numerous collection of petty pirates and marauders while the Unioners were a more motivated terror organization likely intent on giving Republican Shipping exceptional grief.
The actual reformist faction in Rheinland has and always will be the Bundschuh. There's even a vanilla news article addressing this and it draws parallel between the Bundschuh and Blood Dragons. I could go on and on about how the other Rheinland factions have leeched off a theme that isn't theirs, but it's par for the course considering where I'm posting this.