Full Series Fate of the Clones

I can see the clones having become the 'poster boys' of the early empire... from a propaganda point of view, what beats the hero with a thousand faces, is a million heroes with the same face. The heroism of one, is the heroism of all. After the 'betrayal' by the Jedi and the subsequent quick end to the war that resulted, it would make sense to have the clones portrayed as the heroes at the beginning of the new order.

Of course, on Kamino, they are still growing clones to keep up the reserves and even if they stopped production at the time of ROTS, the new batches wouldn't be ready until ten years later. It is what they do with these clone troopers that is the question. Do they train them up to keep them as Elite, front line troops, or do they just integrate them into the recruits and conscripts that begin filling the Empire's ranks in the fervour of newfound patriotism and fear of further galactic unrest?

Lama Su's assertions to the number of clones ready for combat in AotC gives the impression that they make them in batches of 200,000. This is with the implication that it has been ten years since they started, and the first 200,000 units are just ready. With doubled growth, this would give a gestation time of four and a half months. If they had been cloning from ten years beforehand, and were cloning right up to ROTS... a period of around thirteen years, that would give us a total of around 75 million clones produced by the completion of the Clone Wars, yet out of that, only 17 million would have been old enough to see active service in the war (that is if we count ten years as the growth time for a combat ready clone).

It is arguable that the Empire shut down production of new clones at the end of the war, as they still had 58 million clones on the way to enter service over the following ten years. If each clone had an effective operational frontline service life of around ten to twelve years (biologically age 20 to around 45) there should still be front line capable Jango Fett clones serving the empire right up until EBS and ROTJ. There are certainly Clones in their prime during the time frame of Rebels.

Of course 75 million people, on a galactic scale is absolutely nothing. In the real world, China's army alone is nearing 5 million people and that is just one nation on one planet. The ideal thing would be to use the Veteran clones as recruiting officers and training officers, perhaps sending a handful to each Imperial world to oversee the building of each world's Garrison. At the same time, bringing in fresher faced clones would add to the sense of legitimacy of the Imperial forces in the first decade of the Empire, that many worlds would have to swallow as their civil liberties were being eroded. Each highly populated world would need hundreds of thousands of Stormies to maintain order, and the quiet little backwaters would need a fair few thousand too. Given that there's thousands of worlds under the Empire's control, and there were enormous clone casualties during the war, the numbers of Stormies would likely be along the lines of 1 in 20 being actually Jango clones, however I would argue that the clones took positions of command, or at least formed their own specialist squads.

Now, we don't know what other little engineering tricks the Kaminoans popped into the Clone DNA. No customer would want to have to look after the welfare of several million geriatric clones once their ability to fight, act as reserve / support troops or train others has expired. It is possible that they have a kill switch that 'deactivates' them upon reaching a certain age or level of infirmity. If not, it is entirely possible that any survivors from that initial first batch of clones would be alive come ROTJ, with a biological age of 72 years old, which is comfortably within modern human life expectations. By the time of ANH most clones (certainly not all) would be past front-line service age, but would be able to serve in very important and pivotal support roles within the chain of command. Few would have reached the higher echelons of the Empire of course, as the old EU stated, and the new continuity seems to be suggesting, that it was the more aristocratic families of the GFFA that took those positions (Palpatine knew it was better to have the lions at the front, and the donkeys at the back else you'll get your generals plotting against you).

But therein lies the genius of the plain Stormtrooper armour. That bland, uniform look with no obvious marks of individual or squad differentiation would mean that no enemy of the empire would know until the shooting started, if they were exchanging shots with a veteran of the Umbara campaign, or some dolt from Anchorhead with a wonky eye. There were clones in the Imperial army, just in minority, and never with their helmets off.

 

I like this explanation it fits everything we have so far.

 

I wonder if Vader's wingmen in the Battle of Yavin were clones. They seemed like they were just waiting around before Vader told them to join him.

 

That explains the beating they gave out on Tantive IV. Vader's personal squads being Clones and the standard fodder being recruits.

 

I think the latter recruits in the Empire era were perhaps not even given the same intensive training as the clone troopers. I mean, the military bureaucracy had to be bloated like a juggernaut and corrupted / lax in some departments. To some officers, stormtroopers were probably nothing more than bully boys and cannon fodder so why bother to waste so much time in their training. As long as they can aim a rifle and shoot, good enough, they pass.

 

Well the clone troopers were trained for 10 years

 

Will Vader's Fist appear in Season 2? We know that Vader has a major appearance.

 

Well Rex and others like him became hunted as traitors by other Clones :

http://comicbook.com/2015/04/18/captain-rex-hondo-vader-ahsoka-and-more-are-all-in-star-wars-reb/

So it seems rogue clones are in hiding as much as surviving Jedi are.

 

Looking back at the Clone Wars 3D show, I really I extremely happy to see it go. The time really came to move past that era ten years ago.

I don't know how anyone can tell the clones apart, let alone care about them individually. I'm hoping after the war is over, the Empire simply moved them onto one planet for retirement and used it as target practice for the prototype Death Star.

 

That interview is interesting... I really hope we get to see the events of Order 66 from Rex and Ahsoka's POV. It has been bad enough watching Jedi characters go through it, but Rex being a traitor will give me feels.

 

It's pretty simple to tell them apart because of Tattoes and hair color and sometimes eye color.

 

If you think that you clearly haven't watched the full show.

 

^Or I've seen every episode and thought it was time to move on. Rebels is refreshing, though I think this should have been the focus of an animated series in 2008 like TCW was instead. I liked the 2D Clone Wars from CN much better. Instead of Rebels now it could have been the post-Endor era also.

 

Or an OT era series.

 

I have to agree with this after much thought I think TCW ended when it should have and rebels is a refreshing site.

 

As of Smugglers Run

Spoiler

there are still some clones serving in the military after a new hope!!!!!!

 

Hmmmm...

Spoiler

Are they AotC clones, or younger?

 

Estimated physical age - around 40. Which would suggest that their chronogical age is around 20 - which would suggest they were first "conceived" around ROTS.

 

If they were conceived and in embryo stage in ROTS then they would be around 40 so ROTS.

So much for the clones not serving in the OT.

Also if you do the math this means it is possible although unlikely that there are still Jango clones alive as of TFA.

And this means we can cross Sheev killing the not ready for duty clones.

 

Oh, fine! This makes me like the 'new' OT era a little bit better.

 

Excellent!

 

This makes me wonder when they officially stopped making clones.

 

At some point between ROTS and Tarkin, I would guess. We'll have to wait and see - but the theme seems to be of Kamino clones being extremely rare in the OT era.

 

Although that might be because of the size of the Imperial military and not because of the clones for example let's say there are 5 million clones serving during ROTS that means there could be 5 million clones in the imperial army but the whole army is let's say 10 billion get what I am saying.

 

Anyone care to quote the relevant passage re. clones in Smugglers Run?

Iron_lord? Jedi Knight Fett?

I'm curious.