Juggernauts and AT-ATs

[Srelex]

Which of the two vehicles are more effective at their purposes: firepower, transportation, and intimidation, or more effective all round? How durable is the Juggernaut compared to its legged cousin, from what we know, and how practical is it in general?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

There are two different Juggernauts, the Heavy Assault Vehicle (Wheeled) a5, as spawned by West End game material and later seen throughout the EU, and the HAV(w)a6, the one which appears on screen in Revenge of the Sith. One is clearly a descendant of the other, the a5 being a 21.8m long reinforced platoon transport, the a6 being 49.4m long and with internal capacity for two understrength companies, depending on internal configuration.

Personally, I reckon the AT-AT fits somewhere in between the two- better armed than the a5, more agile and terrain capable although much slower, similar transport capacity, possibly superior non- motive durability; but outclassed by the a6, which has one single heavy laser and one rapid- repeating heavy laser in independent turrets as opposed to the AT- AT's twin chin heavy blasters, a secondary armament of two antipersonnel lasers, two twin blasters and two artillery- range rocket launchers to the AT-AT's two cheek guns.

The AT-AT is far and away the slowest of all of them, and even at that it's inexplicably fast; look at those legs, at the slow stomping approach at Hoth, and try to imagine them moving at 60km/h- I cannot for the life of me picture a running AT-AT without also imagining Wile. E. Coyote trying to get a lasso on it. The Juggernauts, it's much easier to see how they manage to make the speeds they do (160km/h for the a6 and 200km/h for the a5)- but they sacrifice agility to stability, in the fluff text for both; at that, they are more agile than repulsorlift vehicles which have no traction to work against, only air friction. At least, that was what was thought at the time of the a5.

Which is best? To a certain extent, horses for courses. The a6 is the biggest and nastiest, but it's also the clumsiest and least deployable. It won't fit on board any dropship that can be carried on board anything less than a supercapital or a dedicated troop carrier, so it's not reaction force. It's also not really the right size to fit down most streets, or agile enough to cope with broken terrain.

For set pieces where you control the pace and place of the fighting, the HAV(w) a6, wherever it can be used. Otherwise, and it pains the repulsortank fan in me to admit this, the AT-AT.

With no holds barred, I wouldn't expect any of them to be remotely effective. Under contested airspace, anything that size and that clumsy is dead meat for starfighter CAS.

[Srelex]

With no holds barred, I wouldn't expect any of them to be remotely effective. Under contested airspace, anything that size and that clumsy is dead meat for starfighter CAS.

Well, at Kashyyyk the Juggers didn't seem too fazed by the droid gunships.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

If you have opinions of your own, state them. What is it that you believe to be the case here?


It is painfully obvious, from the lack of molten spots on planets amongst other factors, that ground equipment is built on a scale appropriate to it's environment, and naval hardware is built on a scale appropriate to it's.

The droid gunship (Baktoid Fleet Ordnance's Heavy Missile Platform) is built to the ground standard, and has less raw speed in open space than an escape pod. The AT-AT, at it's very best- 'maximum firepower'- delievered about the same amount of energy as a 5kt bomb.

A bog- standard Corellian Corvette carries two twin light turbolaser turrets, each putting out five bolts per second at six megatons' worth of energy. It outguns the AT-AT twenty-four thousand to one. It's nowhere near twenty thousand times the size. Thirty-five to forty, depending on how you scale the AT-AT.

The HMP is built to a world full of cliffs and trees and atmosphere and people. It exists on the same scale as the AT-AT and the Juggernaut. Any starfighter worthy of the name is built to the naval scale, to far higher power densities, and should be able to turn any ground vehicle you care to name into confetti without breaking stride.

[nightmare]

Which of the two vehicles are more effective at their purposes: firepower, transportation, and intimidation, or more effective all round? How durable is the Juggernaut compared to its legged cousin, from what we know, and how practical is it in general?

I'm going to assume we're talking about an A6, since the A5 is the Juggernaut's poor cousin.

Firepower: Seems pretty similar, micronuke level.
Transportation: A6 carries 50 troops up to 300 vs the AT-AT's 40 troops up to ?. It also has a much higher top speed, although only in favourable terrain of course. The AT-AT has much better traversal capability although it is also limited to suitable terrain. Also, neither Jugg version can turn for shit but the A5 has a cockpit in both ends.
Intimidation: AT-AT, made for it.
Durability: The AT-AT is known for its heavy armor, the same cannot be said for the A6 although it's clearly a heavy vehicle. The difference is probably within the same magnitude.
Practicality: Depends on the terrain, mostly.
Range/Logistics: Unknown for AT-AT.

The Empire kept the A6 version and made the smaller A5 version for some reason - it's possible that they had more need of lighter vehicles and less heavy ones after the Clone Wars, when military action became mostly policing rather than full scale war. I can't help but think of Strykers as a similar case.

The AT-AT was newer and incorporated designs from the 'naut. It seems very likely that neither vehicle is a "best in everything", as the Empire kept both.

[lord Martiya]

For what I see, AT-AT and Juggernaut are to be used in different contests. When you need to move troops fast against a relatively undefended foe, the higher speed of the Juggernaut is the best. Against Echo Base heavy defensive line, or if Darth Vader wants to communicate he's pissed, the psychological terror and heavier armor typical of the AT-AT will do the job.

[Kingmaker]

I believe that one of the Essential Guides states that the Juggernaut family of vehicles were plagued by maintenance problems, although I don't have access to the book at the moment, so I can't confirm that.

[hunter5]

I think if I remember the Essential guide to vehicles and vessels correctly the ATATs can be used on a wider range of environments than the Juggernauts ( I could be wrong on this i have the older version of the guide and am not entirely sure where my copy is). Also if I remember on Wong's web site he brings up several advantages of the ATAT about it being combined forward armor, anti air craft, and heavy artillery piece so it is more versatile.

Kingmaker the maintenance issue is mostly for the older models because the technicians have trouble finding parts for them.

[Shroom Man 777]

It's also not really the right size to fit down most streets, or agile enough to cope with broken terrain.

And the AT-AT is? They LUMBER. From what we see in ROTS, the Juggernauts are also quickly deployable since we see Yoda's taskforce with Juggernauts on the scene pretty quickly. Also, the Juggernauts were able to move in jungle terrain quickly and rapidly engage the Seperatist force. Imagine an AT-AT trying to play catchup, walking as fast as it did in ESB. That's a riot.

Also, the ATAT presents a significantly larger target profile than the Jughead.

For set pieces where you control the pace and place of the fighting, the HAV(w) a6, wherever it can be used. Otherwise, and it pains the repulsortank fan in me to admit this, the AT-AT.

And when you're quickly deploying to a faraway jungle planet, being attacked by a combined arms offensive of killbots, in miserable jungle terrain (as opposed to storming a bunch of ragtag rebels who don't offer any resistance) - the Jugggernaut.

Firepower: Seems pretty similar, micronuke level.
Transportation: A6 carries 50 troops up to 300 vs the AT-AT's 40 troops up to ?. It also has a much higher top speed, although only in favourable terrain of course. The AT-AT has much better traversal capability although it is also limited to suitable terrain. Also, neither Jugg version can turn for shit but the A5 has a cockpit in both ends.

Unless the AT-AT has anti-gravity or mass lightening tech, its feet would exert more pressure on the ground than a wheeled vehicle.

Also, unless the troopers have jetpacks, disembarking from an AT-AT also involves either the AT-AT kneeling down or the soldiers using zip-lines tp rappel down. Pretty inconvenient. Presumably the Juggernaut uses a much simpler ramp. This is better if you want infantry to deploy fast or to evacuate fast also. Not only does the AT-AT walk slower, it also shits out soldiers slower too. Boo!

Intimidation: AT-AT, made for it.

Not when lightly armed Rebel fighters frickin lasso them and bring them down to the ground with a piece of space-rope. That's preposterous. Imagine some kind of anti-ATAT weapon, some man-portable weapon designed to fire out a cable that ties itself around the AT-ATs legs. Man.

So if the AT-AT and the Jughead are as well-armed as each other, they'd basically require the same kind of anti-tank weapon to destroy. Except one of them has the added vulnerability to ridiculous space-harpoons, while the other one does not.

The AT-AT was newer and incorporated designs from the 'naut. It seems very likely that neither vehicle is a "best in everything", as the Empire kept both.

I really don't know why they bothered with the legs at all for the AT-At. Perhaps just for the intimidation factor.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The a6 is enormous; it's 49.4m long by 19.6m broad by 30.4m tall. There's no real vehicle that has that kind of profile, except maybe some heavy earthmovers I don't know in detail, but if you started by gluing twenty-five M1 Abrams together, five by five nose to tail and side by side, then- well, apart from beating swords into ploughshares as an interesting piece of abstract art, you'd have roughly the same ground footprint as an a6 Juggernaut. It's not that the AT-AT is good at close, crowded terrain; it's that the juggernaut is even worse.

Imagine the sadistic joy with which one of these could be deployed; to quote a novel I read once, "somewhere at the back of every tankie's mind must be the thought that, if der tag ever comes, life expectancy may not be great but at least we can now start driving through people's houses."

The Future is Better; with the HAVw a6 Juggernaut, you can now drive through people's skyscrapers.

Seriously, an AT-AT stored for transit with it's legs folded up under it is going to be something like half the dimensions of a juggernaut, which means something like an eighth of the volume. The AT-AT is more transportable, more airdroppable, a better unit for reaction forces like ship based fleet marine detachments to use.

When you know there's going to be a fight- when you're starting it, for one- then you can send for the troopships with the big rolling slabs to come and flatten everything.

Incidentally, there seems to be one important exception to the general rule of ground vehicles for ground combat and surface environment, space gear pushed to it's limits; artillery. Imperial repulsor- chassis heavy guns, and the Clone Wars SPHA-T, seem to be a ground combat chassis with a full blown naval grade laser on top.

[Shroom Man 777]

Wait a sec. Is the A6 the ones seen in ROTS, or is the A6 even HUEGER?

[Darksider]

Wait a sec. Is the A6 the ones seen in ROTS, or is the A6 even HUEGER?

The A6 is the model seen in ROTS spewing missiles on Kayyyshyk.

That thing's probably got waaaaay more intimidation factor going for it than an AT-AT. Can you imagine a squad of massive armored vehicles the size of some naval warships rolling down an open plain at you spewing amounts of missile fire that would make Macross fans red with envy? I doubt many people could maintain bowel control in such a situation, let alone proper combat cohesion.

[Simon_Jester]

It's also not really the right size to fit down most streets, or agile enough to cope with broken terrain.

And the AT-AT is? They LUMBER. From what we see in ROTS, the Juggernauts are also quickly deployable since we see Yoda's taskforce with Juggernauts on the scene pretty quickly. Also, the Juggernauts were able to move in jungle terrain quickly and rapidly engage the Seperatist force. Imagine an AT-AT trying to play catchup, walking as fast as it did in ESB. That's a riot.

Also, the ATAT presents a significantly larger target profile than the Jughead.

Of course, conversely it has longer range; everybody uses direct-fire blasters in Star Wars, so the only way to get long range is to be tall enough that you have a big horizon. If you can see it, it can see you, and it has bigger guns than you do. There are major problems with the design, of course, but I can easily see it as having been originally sketched out as a sort of long range artillery/sniper platform, meant to engage at distances of 10 km or more, with a screen of lighter forces on the ground around and in front of it to keep the enemy off its flanks and rear.

Then Palpatine saw it and said "I like it, make it a troop transport," or something like that, and the design team had to go back to the drawing board...

Not when lightly armed Rebel fighters frickin lasso them and bring them down to the ground with a piece of space-rope. That's preposterous. Imagine some kind of anti-ATAT weapon, some man-portable weapon designed to fire out a cable that ties itself around the AT-ATs legs. Man.

In the artillery/sniper role, there's what I'd call an easy solution to that problem: stand still and have one of your escorts hose down the legs with light antipersonnel blaster fire. It won't do more than scratch the paint on your armor, but it should cut the rope.

The real problem is that the AT-AT, as I see it, is that was used wrong at Hoth; they kept plodding forward to point blank when they should have hung back and used their greater range and firepower to bombard the enemy and keep their heads down while the lighter forces got in close. The only justification I can imagine is that the deep snow would impede infantry (and, presumably, tracked or wheeled vehicles), so they needed something with the sheer weight to push through the snow and get down to the dirt (bedrock?) underneath.

Incidentally, there seems to be one important exception to the general rule of ground vehicles for ground combat and surface environment, space gear pushed to it's limits; artillery. Imperial repulsor- chassis heavy guns, and the Clone Wars SPHA-T, seem to be a ground combat chassis with a full blown naval grade laser on top.

Well, someone has to try and keep those Corellian Gunships from hovering in the atmosphere and blowing all your other ground forces to a thin layer of impure carbon and iron hoarfrost...

[lord Martiya]

That thing's probably got waaaaay more intimidation factor going for it than an AT-AT. Can you imagine a squad of massive armored vehicles the size of some naval warships rolling down an open plain at you spewing amounts of missile fire that would make Macross fans red with envy? I doubt many people could maintain bowel control in such a situation, let alone proper combat cohesion.

I'm with you on the missiles, a squadron of those would match two squadrons of Meltrandi Power Armors during a rock concert (in a special episode of Macross 7 there was exactly that scene: a group of uncultured Meltrandi being 'attacked' with rock music and reacting firing all their weapons in empty space while crying like at a real concert).
But the AT-At intimidation depends also on something else, namely the fact you can see and shoot them a long way yet they just shrug off everything you throw at them and advance calmly while casually blasting into oblivion everything you have. Something similar to the reaction to the first tank assault in history: they advanced against the German trenches like monsters, shrugging off rounds from rifles and machine guns and explosions from hand grenades while gunning down the entrenched defenders.

[Thanas]

The AT-AT has two heavy laser cannons vs 1 heavy laser cannon. Compared with the cross section of the Juggernaut, very little of the Juggernaut seems to be devoted to reactor power.

So I would give the AT-AT this one due to the fact that it carries double the heavy armament.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

No numbers, but the RotS:ICS does have lots of qualitative details in it:

The ICS says that "[...] with an unshielded target, a Juggernaut can blast the heat of a nuclear bomb onto one small spot, creating a blazing fireball." That vague description should put its weaponry at least at the AT-AT's maximum firepower level of 5-17kt per shot (I'm unfamiliar which of the two is the more reliable estimate these days).

Also, while only listed as a "rapid repeating laser cannon" in the summary, the diagram indicates that the repeater is a "rapid-repeating heavy laser cannon". The Juggernaut also has two medium laser cannons and two twin blaster cannons, in addition to all of its missiles and grenades. IIRC, the AT-AT only has two twin blaster cannons as secondary armament.

While the AT-AT has been listed as a long-range artillery platform, its maximum range is <20km on an Earth-sized planet due to the horizon (19.6km if you assume the laser is 30m off the ground). The A6's artillery is listed as having 30km range, though missiles may have disadvantages compared to lasers in terms of bombardment*.

Finally, the main description says that the vehicles is "built around a powerful reactor core and engine". I'm not sure if that emphasis implies that it's notable or just a fact.

The A6 is, however, listed as "a match for most ground-based war machines", so if it does outmatch an AT-AT, it doesn't sound like by much, if that sentence is to be believed.


*Does anyone know if the 30.4m height (about equal to the AT-AT) is including the mast? If not, the Juggernaut should have longer range for its guns than the AT-AT, since the weapons are higher on the hull.

[Shroom Man 777]

The AT-AT has two heavy laser cannons vs 1 heavy laser cannon. Compared with the cross section of the Juggernaut, very little of the Juggernaut seems to be devoted to reactor power.

So I would give the AT-AT this one due to the fact that it carries double the heavy armament.

Do we even know the reactor proportion of the AT-AT? And we know that in SW, ships can focus reactor output and concentrate it on one turret/cannon for maximum firepower. While one wonders what that does to reliability and whatnot, eh. The Juggernaut also sports a whole crapload of missiles, something we haven't seen the AT-AT do.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The 'rapid repeating' heavy laser cannon should be slightly more use against rapidly manoeuvring targets like airspeeders and repulsortanks; in fact, considering the threat, the surprise is that there isn't something similar on the AT-AT.

Doctrinal issues? The AT-AT has vulnerable locomotion- embarrassingly so- low speed and nothing really useful against light, fast vehicles. Granted that the rebel airspeeders at Hoth were being flown by the best the alliance had, but so supposedly was Blizzard Force. (an elite, that is.)

The fact that they managed at all, doing the equivalent of swatting flies with a screwdriver, is impressive, but they definitely had the wrong tools for the job, and I think that's more to do with the tactical role the heavy walker was designed for.

The juggernaut was put to use as a capital unit in a long, attritional campaign. The heavy walker was designed to prevent attritional campaigns. Look at the AT-AT as the follow-on piece to the Juggernaut; it's much smaller and lighter, so for the equivalent amount of space lift you get many more of them on the front line.

Strategic mobility, you maybe could drive a jugger around the world- and does anyone else think that the ICS note of "fuel for 30,000km" doesn't make sense for a reactor powered vehicle that has to power heavy energy weapons? What's the relationship between mileage and rounds fired? Surely there has to be one, and that would be a major factor in the range of the vehicle.

If it wasn't there in black and white, I'd naturally assume that, behind the crew, the biggest single limit on this thing's range is lubricating oil and wear on the moving parts. Something that also ought to apply to the AT-AT.

Tactically, both of them come pre- outrun by repulsors, no ground- contact chassis is going to do better than that. Strategically, mobility is probably provided by suborbital dropship hops. The AT-AT could be lots better, but it's a design sacrifice it makes some sense to make.

Two heavy and two medium guns, on a similar if not better line of sight; the mast is a red herring. It's observation range and designation for ballistic weapons, but it's line of sight from the turrets that matters. In very roughly an eighth of the volume and mass.

Yes, I've changed my mind on this, thinking about the logistics of it. The AT-AT actually gains in troop capacity per ton, loses little individual survivability and gains collective survivability, and a herd of AT-AT put out (assuming the guns are comparable) far more fire than their equivalent weight in Juggernaut does.

The relatively high price in operational survivability the AT-AT pays- there are threats that it simply cannot meet effectively- must have been thought to be a worthwhile compromise for the assault capability it projects. I think they would be at their best as part of a combined arms group, with at least light and medium walker escort.