Books The Essential Guide to Warfare by Jason Fry and a pseudonymous Scotsman

One area that I would love to see fully fleshed out and explained is the organization of the Galactic Alliance Defense Force. The evolution that the GADF underwent during the end of the Yuuzhan Vong War through the Second Galactic Civil War and finally through the end of the Sith-Imperial War is pretty remarkable. Lets look at what we know:

At the time of the reorganization of the New Republic into the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances, we basically have four distinct, NRDF-style fleets. The First, Second, and Third Fleets are soley Alliance warships, while the Fourth Fleet is a combined GA/Imperial fleet under Pellaeon. This battle force basically is in place from the victory at Ebaq Nine through the liberation of Coruscant.

By the time of the Swarm War, the GADF is back up to five federal fleets. Once again, these fleets seem to mirror the NRDF organization styles, as well as contain soley federal-controlled warships.

Flash forward a few years to the outbreak of the Second Galactic Civil War, and things get interesting. Thanks to the great info in WOTC's Legacy Era Campaign Guide and the Essential Atlas, we learn that the GADF relied to a great degree of member navies that were assigned to federal control for various periods of time. Nine fleets are fielded, but at least two are Hapan warships and the Ninth Fleet is undescribed, though possibly it contains either entirely new warships (New Class Mk. II???) or reconditioned warships from prior eras (note that the Galactic Voyager served in the Ninth, IIRC). This causes huge problems, as member navies prefer to stay close to home and the GADF's federal ships are too thinly spread.

Frankly, the most interesting part (to me at least) is the major reorganization that occurs in the years following the SGCW. As the LECG points out, the Galactic Alliance government realizes that it cannot/should not rely on member navies for security of it's borders. The Senate, for the first time since probably the Clone Wars, provides the funding to building a truly federal navy, albeit composed of smaller, more advanced ships instread of massive dreadnaughts like the Viscount. What is also interesting is the fact that the numbered fleets are largely done away with in preference of US Navy style regional fleets. We suddenly have the Core Fleet, the Inner Rim Fleet, the Mid Rim Fleet, the Expansion Region Fleet, and the Outer Rim Fleet, possibly more. Very similar to modern USN regional commands like Pacific Command, European Command, Central Command, etc.

I would love to know how these regional fleets are organized. If the USN model is followed, one could presume that each fleet (ie, Core Fleet) is composed of a several numbered fleets. These numbered fleets are all under the auspices of the regional command and are assigned to particular important regions/worlds/assets.

Not only that, but it would be interesting to see a Cracken's Threat Dossier-style explantion of individual fleet organization. How many ships to a task force, task forces to a battle group, battle groups to a fleet, fleets to a regional fleet, etc.

Of course, I can go on and on about the Galactic Alliance Navy. Hell, I am hoping that Admiral Stazi's GA Remnant fleet is organized similar to the old Rebel Fleet (ie, roving battle lines detached from main fleet), but I digress. It is time to cook dinner and I am pretty sure that I am starting to drone on like a old professor.

What can I say, I love this stuff.

--Adm. Nick

 

Perhaps a section detailing the evolution of space flight and how that shifted the focus of combat from the ground to space? A history of the impact of orbital bombardment on warfare and strategy?


(New sith wars would be sweet too...)

 

I think there's a lot of "de facto" power going on here, though. The Empire shifted the power more towards the Navy, whereas the Army was the dominant force during the Clone Wars. But the power that an individual Grand General/Grand Admiral had was probably dependent on a number of factors that varied from person to person.
The main point is that "Grand General" doesn't appear to have been a one-off title (like some of the post-Endor warlords adopted for themselves) but an actual rank created by Palpatine as part of his philosophy of constantly "raising the bar" (IIRC outlined in the Sovereign Protectors entry in the Dark Empire SB).

Where the "12" originated from, although in retrospect I suppose that remaining eight might also have that designation as well instead of "Senior General".
The "twenty military regions" of the GAR being the original Oversectors was a nice bit from the Atlas. There was a discussion a while back of titles like "Black Sword" and "Azure Hammer" originating from the Clone Wars, much like "Open Circle".

Various sources seem to indicate that the Republic had a number of Fleet personnel already on hand, whereas Army forces seemed to tied down mostly in regional or planetary defense forces.
Considering the number of admirals (like Yularen) who were bigwigs in the Empire, I don't think it would be too far to say that Palpatine planned it that way - having Jedi in direct command of Star Destroyers wouldn't have been a good thing in his eyes, especially with the numbers of non-clones they might influence.

 

Regarding space combat, I'd like to see a greater emphasis on frigates and corvettes rather than on large capital ships like the ISD. It only makes sense that smaller vessels would be more numerous and see much more action as the big ships can't be everywhere at once. The Databank entry mentions (or at least it used to) that the Imperial-class Star Destroyer was this massive ship of overkill proportions, and the films reflect this....so it would only make sense that the New Republic, and any standard navy, would not have nearly as many.

 

No, they don't. The films never show any other capital ships than the ISD and the Prequels show its predecessor. They're the most numerous Imperial warships going by the films.

 

The only capital ships in the movies are ISDs and similar? You're joking, rigt? Did you miss all the Rebel ships excluding the Mon Cals? The Consular-class in TPM? Many of the Separatist vessels in AotC? All the Sep frigates in RotS? Did you miss something, or what?

And sure, they're the only Imperial capital ships. But, of course, we only get the important events in the movies - of course they use the biggest ships then. I agree that we shoul ´d learn more about the role of smaller capital ships.

 

This sort of thing happens when there are no large ground forces to fight anymore like when the Clone Wars ended. A military might as well spend more on starships to patrol the space lanes than on heavily-armed battle vehicles that won't be useful in occupation duties. There's no reason why "de facto" influences would factor into why Grand Generals are never shown as full equals of the Grand Admirals.

I don't disagree with that point; afterall, the Secret Order seemed to have a similar setup with ranks such as "Emperor's Eyes", "Emperor's Reach", and all that. I just don't think the rank of Grand General should be a title equal to Grand Admiral..... and why should it? A Grand Admiral can cruise around the galaxy at will, while a Grand General's stuck to whatever star system his Navy couriers deem fit to travel to. The sum of all the parts of the EU clearly intend for the Grand Admirals to collectively be at the top of Palpatine's collection of pet warlords (aside from Lord Vader).

This "rasing the bar" business however is only part of the picture though, if I can go off-track a bit. Not only did the Emperor keep on making new ranks and such, but he devised a Nazi-esque system where numerous agencies have overlapping jurisdiction, thus ensuring that no one faction can grow powerful enough to instigate a coup. In the case of military affairs, we have Imperial High Command which maintains the armed forces and controls a reserve of ships to roam the galaxy as necessary, the Grand Admirals and lesser Warlords who answer to Palpatine instead of High Command, the Moffs who have operational command of any assets in their sectors, Grand Moff Tarkin who states in the ANH novelization that the Emperor tasked him with destroying the Rebellion (which explains how he could travel far away from Oversector Outer in his Death Star) which allows Tarkin's orders to supercede High Command's in all Rebellion-related matters, COMPNOR which is empowered by the Grand Vizer to act as the Empire's all-intrusive thought police and to maintain its own paramilitary, and finally Dark Side flunkies like Darth Vader and the Inquisitorius (who are basically Warlords who can use the Force). I really hope Jason keeps these Byzantine-like power relationships in mind when he's writing about the Imperial command structure.

 

No doubt we'll be impressed, especially if the guide is anything like the immensely well researched Atlas.

However one issue I've always had with a lot of EU authors is that they can't seem to quite grasp how unbelievably epic a galactic civilization composed of tens of millions of worlds is and (to paraphrase Douglas Adams) is therefore really unbelievably huge and senseless to our feeble minds, so big in fact that even the most violent and destructive squabble in our entire solar system would look like a mere back page four inch column on the Holonet news; next to the dozen member worlds that were destroyed when their local stars went supernova and drew less attention than the latest Grav-Ball results. Therefore the military overseeing such a civilization would also have to be equally immense, with tens of millions of vessels, tens to hundreds of trillions of troops (Imperial Sourcebook, Heir to the Empire Sourcebook) and the ability hide the budget for the Death Star for over a decade amongst quintillions of shipping reports and not even batter an eyelid in response.

Although in lieu of once again skimming through my copy of the Atlas, I have more than enough faith to believe that the author can pull off this epic undertaking.

This. I also have a few questions on the same subject that I would love covered:

1) How does orbital supremacy affect ground combat between the relatively diminutive Tanks and Troops?

2) What kind of support can ground forces expect to receive from orbiting vessels (example: satellite recon, communications, direct data streams, precise orbital fire support)?

3) On what level does a Captain have the authority to commit bombardment? From precise terror campaigns intended to break local populations and root out insurgents? Wiping out individual cities? Or simply erasing the population from the planet if they prove to be too stubborn? What kind of reaction can we expect from the sum of the military in such an incident, and how do they cover it up?

4) What is the full extent of an all out naval bombardment such as a Base Delta Zero? Does it merely involve destroying population centers and industry? Or does it entail turning the crust of the planet into molten slag and reducing the planet to a permanently airless sea of radioactive lava as described in the Imperial Sourcebook and several other sources? How commonplace are said operations?

 

I'm sorry, was I supposed to see some other Imperial warship, which is what I was talking about? In the context of the movies, the Imperial-class is the smallest Imperial capital ship we see, and that's a cruiser, not a battleship or battlecruiser, nor even a command ship. The only other Imperial capital ships mentioned are the Corellian-class cruiser and bulk cruiser. None of which are described in detail. The sequel added the Executor, a command ship. Besides that, we had two planetoid-sized battle stations.

So the smallest Imperial warship seen is the Imperial-class.

The blockade of a planet, the sending of probe droids and searching for enemy units, were the main two naval actions in the first two films. Would be most effective with smaller ships, and not the largest combatant the Empire has. So, again, it makes sense to use a mid-sized cruiser like the Imperial-class and not their heaviest naval assets.

You have two decades of WEG and WOTC books for that.

 

What I'd like this book to answer is how an Army of 1.2 million troopers can fight a Galactic War. Note that many/most canon sources use 1.2 million soldiers as the real number, except the KT books, which used a made-up number of 3 million.

The US Armed Forces has 1.4 million active soldiers and 1.4 million in reserves. China's People's Liberation Army has 3.4 million active and 1.2 million in reserves. The entire planet's armed forces have 22.2 million active and 35.9 million reserves. These numbers are courtesy of Wikipedia. So how can an army of 1.2 million fight when real-life planetary armies have close to 60 times that?

There are a few options:

1- Perhaps this book can officially retcon the meaning of "unit". If unit=trooper, then we have 1.2 million. If unit=platoon (~55), we have around 66 million. If unit=company (~200), then it's 240 million. If unit=Batallion (~1300), we have 1.56 billion.

2- 1.2 million was all that was ready right away ("200,000 units are ready, and a million more well on the way" is usually defined as "200,000 ready for Geonosis, and the other 1 million ready for deployment within a couple of days; they just need to suit up"). Perhaps there were millions more that were almost ready. Perhaps a clone takes a few weeks to grow in the vat, and then once decanted, the vat is immediately refilled, meaning every troop can be replaced in just a few weeks. Let's assume that a clone takes 10 years to grow to full maturity and be fully trained (per AOTC). And that "1.2 million" means that this many troopers are fully trained and ready to go. If indeed 1.2 million is their capacity (one would think that if they could grow more at a time, they would), and that it takes a few weeks (call it one month) for a clone fetus to grow until decanted, then the Kaminoans would obviously refill the tanks as soon as possible. By that rationale, an additional 1.2 million troopers might be ready every month going back 13 years (10 years pre-AOTC, plus 3 years until ROTS: total of 156 months). That gives a number of 144 million clones in some stage of growth until Geonosis, plus an additional 43.2 million prepared during the Clone Wars. If not a single clone trooper died, the GAR would be 44.4 million strong by Order 66. Bear in mind too that, according to Death Trap, the GAR didn't have many qualms about putting kids on the lines. I don't doubt that some of these more mundane jobs are being done by the not-yet-fully-trained children-and-teens who can get experience in a relative safe environment. That singlehandedly adds to the workforce of unofficial, not-quite-GAR soldiers ready to go.

3- We know more cloning sources were found later in the War. In Hero of Cartao they found Spaarti cylinders, and those cylinders were active on Centax II by Order 66. This may retcon nicely with Clone Madness (as an experiment, some Spaarti clones were made ASAP, and a whole Division went insane, requiring the Jedi to put them down).

4- Tactics for galactic-scale war are just different. Your enemy, whomever it may be, focuses on spreading his forces equally throughout the Galaxy, so each planet is heavily defended at one or two points only (like in Weapons Factory, Liberty on Ryloth, or The Siege of Saleucami. So each planet has the equivalent of one military base on it, but that base must be taken out (forcing theatrical battles in easily-defensible locations, like surrounded by a canyon or built into a mountain). Battles that can be won through spec ops and guile are often done in such a way, with one Jedi and a single ARC trooper or squad or whatever (e.g. Obi-Wan and A-98 aka Nate aka Jangotat in The Cestus Deception).

5- 1.2 million represents only the clones, and so the actual number is quite a bit higher, since it includes Judicial Forces, Senate Guard, Senate Commandos, and eventually planetary militias (note: with the dates of The Dreadnoughts of Rendili placed as being in 19 BBY, then planetary militias are not part of the

 

It's not enough and never has been. Whoever inside LFL decided that it was a good idea (even if it was GL) is simply a bit... wrong and misguided about logistics of war.

I'd greatly appreciate if the book didn't go into great details about the Clone army, since it's so staggeringly bizarre compared to other armies in the same universe. Even the Rebel SpecForces were portrayed with more soldiers than the GAR, and they were a guerilla force!

We're talking about, again, millions of inhabited and billions of uninhabited (at least, officially) star systems where fighting either took place, was threatening to break out or had military bases. The majority of the galaxy was embroiled in this war, even on a scale that exceeded the longer-lasting and arguably more decisive GCW. This is all going on, with the main combatants being clones on one side and droids on another, regular soldiers being very localized and marginalized for the most part. There's the police units on Coruscant, said to be on "every street corner" across the city planet, and who knows how many others have them. Then there's all the crew onboard the Republic warships etc... I think some of that was alleviated in the CWCG with them not being part of the GAR and instead separate military units. Still, that's a lot of hoop-jumping for what is essentially an inherently silly number for a galactic army.

 

Theoretically you perhaps don't need a huge number of troops even if the war is spread over the whole galaxy. The Republic could defend large areas of its space with its fleet, meaning that the Separatists might never even try attacking large parts of the Republic and only concentrated on less well defended areas or places of particular interest. So the Republic may indeed need more than a few million troops, but not an absolutely huge number either. Despite depictions of the Clone Wars frequently showing massive land battles, such engagements might be rare in a more realistic scenario.

 

And here I usually read that Star Wars isn't supposed to be "realistic".

Given that there are at least quintillions of citizens, all in need of protection of some kind, and that an army like the US has a ratio of 281 to 1 in terms of civilian citizens/soldiers, in peace time, the total amount of clones (frontline soldiers, crewmen, planetary guards) would be in their quadrillions, at the very least.

For the late Republic, which was undergoing a heavy militarization during the wars, the ratio would likely be higher than peace-time US.

If, as some sources imply, the clones were merely an elite force per battle, there would still be a substantial amount of them, if a ratio of non-clone to clone soldier was 1000 to one, that would still mean trillions of clone troops working in some ground capacity.

 

Can't we just ignore the GAR size debate? Ryan Kaufman was pretty clear when he said that "no fixed number of total clones would or could be assigned" due to LFL mandate (a message Traviss never seemed to have recieved for some reason). Just pretend that "3 million = total number" never existed and move along.

If one really wants to make the GAR Guide work, I guess you have it so that the Jedi only have 3 million troops to use at their complete discretion without Senate oversight. The vast majority of the army units and naval taskforces however would have to obtained "on loan" from the Senate, and for some reason these Senate-loaned forces use the OOB depicted in AOTC and TCW rather than the one from the GAR Guide. We know from "Shadow of Malevolence" that the Senate does infact have the power to commission taskforces to do its bidding, afterall. As Palpatine grabbed more and more power, the Jedi were simply given less and less clones to use in their OOBs to make them more reliant on the Chancellor. By ROTS, we see Palpatine getting first dibs on Clone Intelligence infomation which then gets reported to the Jedi Council.

Anywho, the point is that there is no reason to treat the previous GAR clone numbers with any authority.

 

Readily!

I like the thought of the 3 million being the Jedi's "personal guard" in a way, good idea. Having more on loan from the Senate and ultimately Palpatine also works really well.

 

What I wish for is a clarification of the Dodonna-quote from the briefing-scene of ANH, where he explains, that the DS has ?more firepower than half the imperial starfleet?.

Because with this you get either a very large number of ships (more than 82 million ISDs) or a smaller number of ships, which have to be insanely powerful. An obvious solution might be a considerable number of superlaser- and other siege-platforms as well as add the weapons of armed space-stations to the count (are those under Navy-control? HoT seems to indicate, that it is the Army controlling them).



Concerning other topics, that have been mentioned:

battle-droids and automated wars-maschines:
those have been around since at least the time of Xim the Despot and we have seen their wide-spread use during the CloneWars. Properly used they are a great force-multiplier and should complete the organic elements in symmetrical warfare (like the actual army we have seen little of this with the empire, but we know the element is there with the series of SD-droids and the Viper-Automadons or the various DarkTroopers), while automated starships (seen in Marvel and JedI-Trial) could make up a large faction of the little explored imperial supply-chain.

empire and ewoks:
I?d just like to point out, that until Chewbacca hijacked that AT-ST the Stormtroopers were actually winning that battle and driving the ewoks back into the bushes

Stormtroopers (this is partially directed at dewback-rancher):
actually the empire has nothing to justify to the public about ST-Armor, especially since the majority of them are clones. The ?less advanced? and ?less protection? might be a result of limiting costs (with an ever increasing number of stormies, also consider that the Army made up of ?real? humans had even less protection), as well as a result of ?limited need? since the major war was over as well as reducing ?protection? in favour of more ?mobility?. It might also be a psychological thing, since most non-clones get claustrophobic in the white plastoid according to some sources. Less bulky armor might reduce the feeling of ?entrapment? (it should also be noted, that ST-armor consists of 18 shell-pieces compared to over 20 for the clones).

stasis/suspended animation:
We know the empire uses stasis-tech to keep its food-supplies edible and to store its vessels in the so-called ship-depots of its larger warships and space-stations (DSTC). We have also learned with the prisoners of the StarsEnd-facility from Han Solo at StarsEnd, that it is possible to store people in stasis-fields or from more recent sources, that the Kaminoans kept large numbers of clones in suspended animation until they were needed. Of course there is also the carbonite-freezing of Han Solo in TESB. Unless those technologies have some detrimental side-effects especially to the health of those undergoing them, one has to wonder why haven?t seen more of this. Just imagine one or more imperial depot-planets, where they store entire armies of Stormtroopers in stasis to quickly replace losses or have them available in emergencies.

cyborgs:
I don?t see cyborgs having much of a role in traditional warfare, not with EPM-weapons and ion-grenades (and whatever they used in ?Attack of the Zillo-beasts?). What takes out the hardened/protected electronics of CT-Armor, droids and tanks certainly won?t stop at systems integrated with organic flesh (again see Anakin?s hand in ?Zillo-beast?). However cyborgs might have a role in special-forces and intelligence-work and of course the patch-up of wounded soldiers as well as the performance-enhancement of non-combat soldiers working in administration, training and logistics.

Grand Generals:
Grand Generals might have actually been around much longer than the Grand Admirals, considering, that during the CloneWar more emphasis was placed on the Army than the Navy. With the execution of Order 66 somebody must have replaced the JedI-HighGenerals and since we know, that the original twenty sector-armies became the foundation for the later Oversector

 

The only Grand General we've ever seen had a personal Star Destroyer that ferried him and his forces around wherever he wanted to go. He wasn't stuck anywhere.

There's no reason to make the position of Grand General structurally inferior to that of Grand Admiral. A general in the New Republic Army is no lower in rank, structurally, than an admiral in the Navy, yet the Supreme Commander of the New Republic Defense Force has always been a naval admiral, because naval officers are, due to the significance of their branch of service, much more important de facto to the galactic military in the big picture. The Secretary of State and the Secretary of Veterans' Affairs are on an equal level, hierarchically, but no one would argue that the Secretary of State isn't leaps and bounds more important and powerful than the Secretary of Veterans' Affairs. There's no need to rely on some sort of de iure inequity to explain why Grand Admirals are much more practically significant than Grand Generals.

 

The CWCG and the Essential Atlas already addressed the "numbers" issue - I'm not sure what else really needs to be said about it.
The vast amounts of planetary & sector defense forces - as well as the countless non-clone conscripts - during the Clone Wars would be a good topic to explore.

Right, which was a fairly interesting concept - that an Imperial Army officer was essentially in command of Naval forces. Because the position presumably was hand-picked by Palpatine himself, like the Grand Admiral - his influence must've been more than a title and some ground troops.
I am a little amused that Brashin was basically hung out to dry by Isard. Do you think he was even aware that she had abandoned Coruscant deliberately?

I wouldn't mind seeing some of the Imperial generals we've seen (like General Mohc) be retroactively made Grand Generals, much like what happened with Zaarin.

 

Well, we have people like Jerec and Tremayne who have no standing within the military itself having their own personal Star Destroyers assigned to them; I wouldn't think this would be any different.

I'd assume Brashin didn't know, if just because if he did, he should have been able to get to Lusankya. There's actually some room to possibly retcon that in, and put him in the background of the Bacta War, but it's much simpler if he's captured or killed on Coruscant, even though Force Commander is silent on the issue of his fate.

Mohc is first on my list of generals to be retconned to Grand Generals. Also on the list: Paltr Carvin and Balan. Sk'ar would fit the profile, but it would be kind of problematic having a blatantly alien Grand General.

 

Personally, I want to see more Imperial officers being retroactively added into the actual Imperial High Command structure (along with Naval Command, Army Command, Starfighter Command, Stormtrooper Command, and the Ubiqtorate) rather than just being made another one of the Emperor's pet officers. I've been thinking about this sort of thing ever since TCW brought out Yularen from obscurity; Yularen's well on his way to retroactively becoming a Grand Admiral himself thanks to Lucas & Company, when we know there can't really be any other Grand Admirals. Should that retconn actually come to pass, a potential canon conflict can be avoided if the EU establishes Yularen as part of Naval Command or Imperial High Command..... while at the same time serving the ISB as per the pre-TCW canon. Lucas & Company will kinda get their wish while at the same time the previous stuff about the twelve Grand Admirals is not tampered with.

I reckon that Terrinald Screed is another officer more suitable for being part of Imperial High Command (if not its Chief of Staff) than retroactively made some random pet officer of Palpatine. Rom Mohc..... I guess he can boss around Stormtrooper Command and/or be a Grand General. Mohc certainly follows the Grand Admiral tradition of establishing pet projects that wind up scrapped by the Emperor or destroyed. Point being, I don't want Imperial High Command and its subsidiary commands ignored just so the list of Grand Generals and lesser Warlords can be padded.

Although that reminds me: are there more Imperial Barons out there other than Colonel Fel?

PS: I would like it to be established once and for all that the white tunic with black hat is not purely an ISB uniform.

 

The granting of more traditional titles by the Empire hasn't been touched on much. Did Fel get some land out of it? (I seem to recall Dodonna was granted his own moon, although nothing was said about any titles given).
I would probably throw in General Immodet, considering he was said to have been the highest ranking Imperial Army officer on the post-Palpatine IRC.

 

General Immodet, eh? I'm not too sure about him; being the highest-ranked Imperial Army officer can also make him either the last surviving Grand General or the next in line to become the Army Chief of Staff at that point in time. However to reverse an earlier post of mine, I would recommend that Captain Ozzik Sturn be retconned into a Baron. I still think Lord Tion (he could use a first name) remains a suitable candidate to be retconned into a Grand General.

 

The CE Handbook actually describes Immodet as the "highest-ranking general in the Imperial military." Take that for what you will.

 

Tal Ashen might be another candidate, since his command of the forces defending Coruscant seem to be equal to Brashin's.

 

Fel got an estate on Corellia.

As for Immodet, he'd be another great candidate.