PT How big was the Clone Army?

How big was it. In AOTC it is said that 200,000 units were ready and one million on the way. Are units one soldier or is a unit actually a unit of soldiers?

Mod EDIT: Moved to PT

 

A group of soldiers is a unit.

 

Oh boy, here we go again...

Heh, OP - this has been the source for much debate and strife over the years. Arguments have raged over how big the clone army actually was / needed to be to fight a galactic war, and what consists a 'unit' as mentioned by Lama Su in AOTC.

I'm not actually aware if this has been officially addressed in the "New" Expanded Universe yet or if we still have only Legends information to go by?

 

Finally a thread for this discussion.

There were about 200,000 clones deployed on the first battle of Geonosis

So we can assume that 200,000 units means a unit is a clone

So by the end of the war 3 million clone troopers at the age of 18+ years old

And remember they were never meant to hold planets but to take them.

I get these numbers from my brain and Absolutely everything you need to know.

 

It has - in Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need To Know - with "unit" being "clone".

That said - we don't know how many clones entered service between Geonosis and the Battle of Coruscant.

 

In AOTC we know there are 200,000 clones ready with a million more on the way. We don't know how many more were made from after AOTC to ROTJ or later.

 

And what does a million more on the way mean?

In the next month? Or what?

 

We know from the TV show that at some point in the Clone Wars an order was placed for an additional three million clone troopers (identified as individual clones, not "units") and this was treated as a major issue in the Senate. So if three million troopers is canonically considered a large increase in the Republic's military strength, then that lends credence to the idea that the starting figure of 1.2 million from AOTC as individual troopers is accurate.

 

I thought the figure was 6 million, but yes, it does suggest that.

 

Just checked - we were both wrong, heh. The figure given in Pursuit of Peace was five million. The three million I recalled came from the same episode when they talk of an order of battledroids the Separatists made that very week.

 

I think in a galaxy of quadrillions, then both the CIS and GAR must have been very large. The GAR itself would evolve into the Imperial military, maybe the largest ever force ever amassed.

I think the CIS and GAR forces was the largest galactic scale conflict in terms of the sheer number of forces, hence the famous nature of the Clone Wars mentioned in ANH.

The CIS droid army must have numbered in the tens of billions, with droid factories churning out advanced battle droids to supplement local planetary organic forces in the Confederacy.

The Republic clones must have also amounted in the billions to back up the Jedi. I think a unit, mentioned in AOTC, consists of a number of clones - how much is unclear, but it must be in the order of millions. The attack on Geonosis in AOTC shows a significantly large clone force, one large enough to force the Separatists to retreat despite the fact they too have a very large droid army on the planet. And that was just one clone unit. So overall at that point in time, the clone army has a million more units well on the way. By the time of ROTS, several years later, hundreds of units must have been added, both to grow the GAR and supplement it for the losses it took.

Also in the battles we saw, we often saw just one part of it, most planetary or system conflicts took place all over the planet or on many worlds, not just in one town or city. We mostly saw the primary battle and climactic conclusion.

You can even see in ROTS, that it appears some clones are put out into the field before they have even fully matured - on the Jedi cruiser in Obi Wan's briefing, some are younger than others.

So I think the clone army was pretty big, given how big the galaxy was! But not as large as the droids (part of their advantage was numbers) and not as big as the Imperial military - but it was the foundation for that. After ROTS, the clones became clone stormtroopers and the GAR the Imperial army.

 

I think the clone army was very much out numbered to the droid army my guess at least 10 to 1.

 

Yeah I always felt that when the cloners speak of units, they are talking about 1 clone = 1 unit. They are talking in terms of production numbers, and not militarily,

 

That was the situation. Years back when Stover or Traviss asked about what unit mean, Lucas had said that one unit equaled one clone. Traviss thought it was improbable and was able to push it up to three million from one million. That carried over to when TCW brought the subject up.

 

It's really weird if 200,000 units means individual clones. That's a relatively small army for a Galactic conflict. Even some countries on Earth have more military personnel than that.

Billions of clones would make much more sense to me and it definitely wouldn't be out of reach for an advanced cloning civilization.

 

Maybe they'll retcon it. Curious to see how big the Empire's army was.

 

I wouldn't say a retcon is necessary. The film never defines what a "unit" consists of. I could see either making sense to some extent. Either a unit is a measurement of an entire company, or it's an individual clone. If it's a company that satisfies the improbability of an army consisting of 200,000 Clones fighting a galactic wide conflict -- at least initially before the next wave of a million reinforces them, but even that seems like a relatively paltry number -- but if a unit is a reference to a single Clone then that tells you how superior Clones were to Droids. I understand that it's less feasible, but it's Lucas way of communicating their superiority, despite being completely dwarfed by the opposition.

 

For Palpatine 200,000 seems like the perfect number of Clones for day one of the Clone Wars. It's enough Clones for the Jedi to start the war on Geonosis and win the battle there. Butt not enough Clones to quickly defeat the Separatist.

A Republic shortage of troops at the start of the war forces the Jedi to be more directly involved on every level. The more Jedi who fall in combat, the less for Palpatine to deal with later. A shortage of clones weakens the Jedi Order as a whole - spreading them out and distracting them from other duties and politics. War is also a path to the dark side, further weakening the Jedi connection to the force. And a shortage of troops means more planets can be directly affected by the war, and become disillusioned by the Jedi's inability to protect them.

As the war progresses and the the Jedi Order weakens, the number of clone reinforcements could grow exponentially in numbers. The beleaguered Jedi would have no choice but to depend on the clones' help.

By the time ROTS starts and the Republic is winning, there could be billions of clones in service. Their real purpose not to defeat the separatists, but to eliminate the Jedi and impose the Emperor's rule on the galaxy.

 

large.

 

You know, that kinda bothers me. The Clone Wars lasted three years, and clone troopers take ten years to grow.The Kaminoans could have a bunch of 7, 8, 9 and 10 years old clones still in training, which could be deployed as the war progressed, but those new three million clones weren't expected to be ready for combat at least for a decade, and by that point the war would most likely be already lost or won... so, what's the point?

Maybe the Kaminoans switched at some point to faster Spaarti cloning? I haven't still read the Order 66: A Republic Commando novel, but I think Palpatine was already switching to Spaarti clones there...

 

Could be that they'd reached the point of assuming the war would take at least 10 more years.

 

this is my guess the war was a stale mate for most of it with ground more or less equally won or lost until the battle of Coruscant.

 

Since Kamino was in league with the Sith they may have decieved the Jedi with the total number.

 

But they thought dooku was still a jedi.

They were never knowingly working with the sith

 

A lot.