How under militarised is the Galaxy pre-clone wars?

[ray245]

I've been watching Attack of the Clones recently and something struck me as I watched the Jedi attempted to fight off the Droid army. The fact that Windu views that 200 Jedi is enough to fend off anything the Separatist is able to throw at them seems to indicate just how demilitarised the Star Wars Galaxy is.

Given how the Jedi easily the Jedi were wiped out by the Droid attacks, it seems like the Jedi have severely underestimated the among of droids the Separatist can deploy. If an army that can barely fill up a stadium was viewed as an large army to the Jedi, then it does indicate that before the clone wars, most Jedi would not have encounter a military force that big for a long period of time.

So perhaps it is reasonable to expect that having a million man clone army is enough to halt any immediate Separatist invasion during the early stages of the Clone Wars. Most attacks that we have seen in the show and the Clone Wars Cartoon indicates that most battles that occurred on ground probably isn't much bigger than any major World War 2 Battles.

Most battles on screen seems small scale enough that both sides probably never really deployed more than a few hundred thousand men for a major battle. In the Battle of Geonosis, EU sources indicate that 20 Acclamator class transport was deployed, with 12 being used to land troops on the ground.

This mean the number of clones committed to that battle is probably no more than 200,000. If 200,000 men is enough to secure a major planet of the enemy, we can safely assume that most of the planets in the Star Wars galaxy is even more lightly armed for a conflict.

Do we have any other indication about how under militarised the Star Wars Galaxy is pre-clone wars?

[Boeing 757]

I've been watching Attack of the Clones recently and something struck me as I watched the Jedi attempted to fight off the Droid army. The fact that Windu views that 200 Jedi is enough to fend off anything the Separatist is able to throw at them seems to indicate just how demilitarised the Star Wars Galaxy is.

Did he actually ever say this word for word, or is this merely your own loose interpretation of events? My AOTC knowledge is somewhat hazy at the moment, but Mace does say in the beginning of the film that there aren't enough Jedi to protect the Republic. Moreover they did bring along however many units were then battle-ready on Kamino. That hardly indicates that Mace deemed 200 Jedi sufficient for taking on whatever the Separatists had.

Given how the Jedi easily the Jedi were wiped out by the Droid attacks, it seems like the Jedi have severely underestimated the among of droids the Separatist can deploy. If an army that can barely fill up a stadium was viewed as an large army to the Jedi, then it does indicate that before the clone wars, most Jedi would not have encounter a military force that big for a long period of time.

Agreed. Overall it goes to show that this is a galaxy that has lived through a lengthy peace with much stability.

So perhaps it is reasonable to expect that having a million man clone army is enough to halt any immediate Separatist invasion during the early stages of the Clone Wars. Most attacks that we have seen in the show and the Clone Wars Cartoon indicates that most battles that occurred on ground probably isn't much bigger than any major World War 2 Battles.

Most battles on screen seems small scale enough that both sides probably never really deployed more than a few hundred thousand men for a major battle. In the Battle of Geonosis, EU sources indicate that 20 Acclamator class transport was deployed, with 12 being used to land troops on the ground. This mean the number of clones committed to that battle is probably no more than 200,000. If 200,000 men is enough to secure a major planet of the enemy, we can safely assume that most of the planets in the Star Wars galaxy is even more lightly armed for a conflict.

Most likely yes. They've known nothing but peace for nearly a millennium, and the mobilization of the Separatists took almost everyone by surprise--even the Jedi. Sio Bibble is a great example of this thickheaded mentality. He couldn't even fathom an armed conflict ensuing, despite the fact that his homeworld had been occupied just ten years beforehand by the very same entity stirring things up elsewhere on a larger scale. It is clear that they are neither ready nor eager to prepare for the possibility of drawn out warfare. Presumably, it took them collectively a while to get their stuff together and to get the gears of war moving, and so that may explain why we witness small engagements at the beginning of the CW.

Do we have any other indication about how under militarised the Star Wars Galaxy is pre-clone wars?

From the EU, I am certain there is quite a bit of material on which you can draw to prove this, but strictly from the films (TPM specifically) I would say the fact that a member-state like the Trade Federation could swoop in, and invade plus occupy an other member-state such as Naboo implies that this outer region of the Republic is so under-militarized that it can't even mount an effective defense. The best that the Supreme Chancellor could do to defuse the situation is to send a lightly armed ship with two Jedi ambassadors. That doesn't speak too well of the Republic's military at that time.

[Zwinmar]

I would argue that geonosis was a rescue mission utilizing whatever was available and not an indication of what is out there

[Connor MacLeod]

Star Wars has presented a galaxy consistently under-militarized compared to what it is capable of (technologically, industrially, etc.) And for that matter, what war it does have is done rather inefficiently. They've never had a serious need for war (no life or death struggles, no major extenral enemies threatening conquest. Even the Vong didn't quite match up there.) so there's little motivation for them to actually learn to fight properly (and stay that way.)

[Havok]

With the speed that ships travel at, unless you have a galaxy wide conflict, you don't need a massive military, just a well organized one.

[Singular Intellect]

With the speed that ships travel at, unless you have a galaxy wide conflict, you don't need a massive military, just a well organized one.

Given any planet is only hours or days away from established hyperspace travel, it wouldn't take a particularly large fleet of ships to give the impression to a much larger number of planets that they are always under threat and control.

It's probably quite a lot like how a single armed individual can control a large group of people, despite having significantly less bullets than human targets he's intimidating.

[ray245]

I would argue that geonosis was a rescue mission utilizing whatever was available and not an indication of what is out there

However, Geonosis is different from most major planets because it is a arms factory, churning out armies every single second. Given how surprise Anakin and Obi-Wan was when they saw the army under construction, this indicates that the military forces on Geonosis is large in comparison to most planets. It would make little sense for them to be afraid of the size of the Droid army on Geonosis if it is smaller than the defence force on most planets.

Furthermore, the fact that the Separatist lost the entire planet to a mere 200,000 clones does indicate how small the Droid army is. Especially given that the Coalition forces requires 300,000 men just to conquer a small nation like Iraq, it seems unlikely that the Droid army on Geonosis was any bigger than the combined strength of earth's armies.

[atg]

You could look at it however as it taking 200,000 clones and 200 Jedi to secure the arena and surrounding area. IIRC a novel mentions that the Seperatist fleet in orbit was defeated by the Republic, the rest of the droid army being dealt with by bombardment?

[Zwinmar]

It seems to me that it appears more along the lines of a raid rather than a full fledged fight. At least initially until the fleet could control the high ground. Of course I don't think the Jedi expected to run into a force that could come so close to decimating their own ranks. And all for a Jedi knight, a whiny padawan and his squeeze.

[Connor MacLeod]

With the speed that ships travel at, unless you have a galaxy wide conflict, you don't need a massive military, just a well organized one.

Well I'm ont sure I'd call the GE's military 'organized' - it was riven by conflict and backstabbing like alot of the Imperial institutions. Palpy liked to have everyone else at each other's throats because it kept them easy to deal with and kept them off his back (Even with Vader.) Sith way and all that. There's also the bureaucracy and corruption which played a huge role in the aforementioned inefficiency, and the Death Stars (or other Superweapons) were part and parcel of that too. It's a testament that one of the few 'military' opertaions I can recall the Empire being part of (from the Lando Calrissian novels) was such an utter clusterfuck they suffered near total casualties on the first three incursions, and had to constantly be hauling in troops on an hourly basis (and this despite having orbital superiority with 'continent destroying' energy weapons expressly mentioned. )

And in actuality, given their capabilities - industrial, hyperdrive and other factors, any 'true' war would doubtless be widespread, short, and incredibly destructive, so there are actually solid motivations to keep things ineffective at the galactic level (or at least, limit the degree of effectiveness.) And given that ineffective (or highly local) warmaking can also probably support commercial ventures like KDY and such without destroying the galaxy in the process, there's probably an economic one as well (since widespread galactic war is going to be bad from an economic perspective for many reasons.)

Thus the only reasons for having a military at all in Star Wars is really peacekeeping (to keep local conflicts from getting too big or spilling over and dealing with piracy and terrorism - we saw from TIE fighter this was a big part of the Imperial Navy's responsibilities.), and political and economic reasons (intimidation and terror was a big part of the GE's credo, and the Navy pre-Death Star was a big factor in that obviously.)

This also remains true in the Clone Wars as well. Typically we assume haivng 'quadrillions/quintillions' of battle droids on the Separatist side is supposed to guarantee insta-win, but that neglects a number of parameters such as transport capability and logistics. We know the Separatists had millions of vessels (warships or otherwise, I dont remember) and each could carry maybe some 100K droids each, so you're talking at best high billions/low trillions of transport capability alone, and that still doesn't cover the logistical requirements of the droid army... and that only represents about a millionth or a billionth of their total numbers. Defensively those quintillions give a huge, almost unbeatable advnatage (small wonder the Separatist holdouts were considered fortress worlds in some cases!) but offensively they would be much more limited and obviously could not steamroll the REpublic.

Similarily, the REpublic, whilst having no coherent, central military prior to the Clone army, still had a pletheroa of local defensive forces of varying levels of capability (with non clone forces), and those would be the primary opposition the Separatist militaries would face. And given that the Republic has the significant territorial advantage (hundreds of thousands or millions of planets as opposed to thousands for the Separatists at the start) conquest would neither be immediate or simple. In that same vein, the Grand Army takes on more of a 'offensive' and intervention role - they go in to bolster local forces and help them route attacks, or they go on the offensive to disrupt the enemy, but their small size (At the start at least) simply means they can't take the offensive decisively either.

Also as far as AOTC goes: We dont know what the Geonosis battle was meant to represent from the POV of the SW side (on either side.) They don't exactly have any experience or basis to judge from as far as warfighting goes, and what we think doesn't necccesarily reflect their own thinking on matters, so we should be careful projecting our own interpretations onto their mindsets (Thats part of the whole 'competence/militarization' issue, we tend to look at things more form what we think/wish them to be rather than the POV of what they think/believe, and the two are not neccesarily the same.)

[darthscott]

The pre-Clone Wars Republic military is pretty tiny, but then the individual planetary planets have standing armies and navies. Some of the major worlds like Kuat and Corellia have some large ships and militaries, but unfortunately it still doesn't sound like it amounts to a whole lot.

In my opinion the Star Wars numbers given for almost anything are extremely minimalistic. Even though hyperdrive makes for a fast transit around the Galaxy, and as mentioned above, considering the technology, the number of settled planets, and resources available I would think large fleets and armies would be much more common sight in the SW Galaxy. Also considering the fact that all of the planets in the Republic have their own sovereign governments and militaries, I would think there would be a lot of competition and rivalries between local powers. I would then think that this would lend to a more militarized Galaxy. The seventeen wars between Alsakan and Coruscant would be a good example of this.

[Lord Falcon]

I read in one EU book (I think it was Attack of the Clones) that the Republic had no standing military, none at all. They had some lightly armed vessels under the control of various galactic organizations, such as the Judicial Department, and some planets did have standing militaries, but those were very limited in terms of firepower and the amounts of ships they could field. Certainly nothing that could stand up to a warship as powerful as, say, a Star Destroyer. Remember the mindset of the people in the pre-Clone Wars Republic: They thought the Sith were dead, and that there was no enemy to fight, kind of like the post-Cold War era in our world: We no longer have a huge enemy to fight, certainly not like we did at the end of the last world war. In that situation, the Jedi Knights, as was shown in the movies and the EU, became the galaxy's policemen. It was stated (I can't remember where) that there were 10,000 Jedi Knights in the years leading up to the Clone Wars. Considering their powers and how they could single-handedly take on many enemies, you begin to see how easy it was for the Republic to keep stability, at least until the bureaucracy began crushing under the weight of itself...

[Boeing 757]

The Galactic Republic around TPM through AOTC reminds me very much of the current European Union. Perhaps it wasn't always so, but somewhere along the line the central government lost much of its authority to its member-states, which oversee themselves directly and only adhere to Republican principles so that they could still enjoy the benefits associated with membership within the Republic. In essence, the Galactic Republic was a loose confederation of millions of member entities, and as we all know, confederations experience greater hardship in dealing with crises. What the Republic sorely needed (and certainly got in some excessive form thanks to Palpatine) was a transference of power back to the central government.

[Havok]

With the speed that ships travel at, unless you have a galaxy wide conflict, you don't need a massive military, just a well organized one.

Well I'm ont sure I'd call the GE's military 'organized'

I'm not saying it was, I'm just saying that's all you would need to effectively control and police the entire galaxy with the technology available.

[Darth Mencken]

**EXTREMELY** under-militarised, obviously!!! IIRC, the Clone army, which was to do ALL of the fighting for the Republic (with the Jedi taking time off from monastic and diplomatic duties to serve as generals), numbered just 200,000 in the initial batch in "Attack of the Clones," with another 1 million on the way in a little more time. It took 10 years to produce that many combat troops. And the Clone Wars are said to have lasted a mere 3 years, so it seems unlikely the Clone troops could ever have numbered more than 1.2 million.

For comparison, a number of individual NATIONS on this ONE planet (the US, Russia, China, and that dinky little tinpot dictatorship North Korea, being among them), have armies bigger than this (tho not the ability to deploy them quite so far or so rapidly as the Republic, admittedly)!

Still . . . a civilization, even a peaceful one, that has been at peace in general for a long time, and comprises even a good fraction of the galaxy, can only muster 1.2 million fighting men (plus around 10,000 or so superhuman "generals"), and needs at least 10 years to accomplish THIS?!?

There was something about the Prequels that destroyed the suspension of disbelief for me even worse than this. But I can't recall what it was right now!

Even without instituting a truly harsh draft, and even if most Republic worlds are more like Alderaan or Tattooine in terms of population than Coruscant (Cripes, Coruscant alone IIRC is said to have a population of 1 trillion - at least 8 or 9 times the total number of Humans who've ever been born on Earth, incidentally - and should be able to provide BILLIONS of boots without inconveniencing even a percentage point of their populous!!!), I would expect a civilization spanning even a small fraction of a galaxy, to be able to raise an army of trillions in a couple afternoons!

[Batman]

No it wouldn't and even if it would it'd become an army of corpses on short notice. It takes months (years, probably) to turn a person into a halfway efficient soldier. Giving them a gun and a uniform doesn't turn someone into a soldier. Training does.
Also kindly note that the ten years wasn't the time it took them to turn the clones into an army. It was the time the clones needed to grow old enough so they could be turned into an army. Have fun trying raise an efficient army of 4 year olds.
Also, if memory serves, it was 200,000 units. Nobody ever said a thing about the unit being one individual soldier.

[Darth Mencken]

No it wouldn't and even if it would it'd become an army of corpses on short notice. It takes months (years, probably) to turn a person into a halfway efficient soldier. Giving them a gun and a uniform doesn't turn someone into a soldier. Training does.
Also kindly note that the ten years wasn't the time it took them to turn the clones into an army. It was the time the clones needed to grow old enough so they could be turned into an army. Have fun trying raise an efficient army of 4 year olds.
Also, if memory serves, it was 200,000 units. Nobody ever said a thing about the unit being one individual soldier.

I'll have to watch AOTC again. The "unit doesn't equal individual soldier" argument, sounds like weasling!

Also, gonna read-up on the US draft at the start of our involvement in WWII, or the Civil War better yet. Closest R/L analogs for what the Republic faced (Civil War more in terms of, well, what the Republic actually faced - WWII more in terms of comparative scale and level of organization). Pretty sure basic training (what it took to get at least an acceptable soldier) wasn't terribly long. Certainly not years.

And we won both wars (well, the Union beat the Confederacy in the Civil War), so we must've done something right.

And there are certainly enough fit adult Republic citizens, that it wouldn't be necessary to clone and grow an army from scratch! Unless the Republic's Constitution explicitly forbade citizens from becoming soldiers (even willingly?), or the citizenry was THAT averse to the very thought of military service, I just don't see why taking years to clone an army (other than because years ago something called "the Clone Wars" was mentioned once or twice in passing) was necessary at all.

While creating a large batch of sentients specifically to be used as cannon fodder was perfectly alright for this supposedly democratic government!

[Batman]

No it wouldn't and even if it would it'd become an army of corpses on short notice. It takes months (years, probably) to turn a person into a halfway efficient soldier. Giving them a gun and a uniform doesn't turn someone into a soldier. Training does.
Also kindly note that the ten years wasn't the time it took them to turn the clones into an army. It was the time the clones needed to grow old enough so they could be turned into an army. Have fun trying raise an efficient army of 4 year olds.
Also, if memory serves, it was 200,000 units. Nobody ever said a thing about the unit being one individual soldier.

I'll have to watch AOTC again. The "unit doesn't equal individual soldier" argument, sounds like weasling!

There's a second e in weaseling and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while since I saw that sorry excuse for a movie myself.

Also, gonna read-up on the US draft at the start of our involvement in WWII, or the Civil War better yet. Closest R/L analogs for what the Republic faced (Civil War more in terms of, well, what the Republic actually faced - WWII more in terms of comparative scale and level of organization). Pretty sure basic training (what it took to get at least an acceptable soldier) wasn't terribly long. Certainly not years.

It was more than 'a couple of afternoons', I can tell you that.

And we won both wars (well, the Union beat the Confederacy in the Civil War), so we must've done something right.

A massive industrial/numerical advantage (ref WW2) will do that for you. Yes, you maybe can turn a person into a marginally effective soldier in a dozen weeks or so (though I wouldn't have bet any money on me being any use after basic training). The clonetroopers were supposed to be elite, or so I seem to recall. Plus the built-in loyalty/obedience thingy was probably considered a plus (backfired something fierce in the end to be sure but sure nice to have for the duration, especially as they didn't know it would).

And there are certainly enough fit adult Republic citizens, that it wouldn't be necessary to clone and grow an army from scratch! Unless the Republic's Constitution explicitly forbade citizens from becoming soldiers (even willingly?), or the citizenry was THAT averse to the very thought of military service, I just don't see why taking years to clone an army (other than because years ago something called "the Clone Wars" was mentioned once or twice in passing) was necessary at all.

I hate to tell you but most people don't particularly enjoy being shot at for a living, with said living usually not being much, especially when the threat they're protecting their nation against hasn't existed for thousands of years. We know local military/police forces exist (Naboo comes to mind), but the Republic hasn't had a need for a stand army in a very long time.

While creating a large batch of sentients specifically to be used as cannon fodder was perfectly alright for this supposedly democratic government!

Except the government had nothing to do with it, of course. The Clone army was created at the behest of Darth Sidious, the Republic merely made use of them what with them being available. Kinda pointless to raise an army of half-trained rookies when you have one of fully trained warriors already at your disposal.

[Darth Mencken]

No it wouldn't and even if it would it'd become an army of corpses on short notice. It takes months (years, probably) to turn a person into a halfway efficient soldier. Giving them a gun and a uniform doesn't turn someone into a soldier. Training does.
Also kindly note that the ten years wasn't the time it took them to turn the clones into an army. It was the time the clones needed to grow old enough so they could be turned into an army. Have fun trying raise an efficient army of 4 year olds.
Also, if memory serves, it was 200,000 units. Nobody ever said a thing about the unit being one individual soldier.

I'll have to watch AOTC again. The "unit doesn't equal individual soldier" argument, sounds like weasling!

There's a second e in weaseling and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while since I saw that sorry excuse for a movie myself.

Also, gonna read-up on the US draft at the start of our involvement in WWII, or the Civil War better yet. Closest R/L analogs for what the Republic faced (Civil War more in terms of, well, what the Republic actually faced - WWII more in terms of comparative scale and level of organization). Pretty sure basic training (what it took to get at least an acceptable soldier) wasn't terribly long. Certainly not years.

It was more than 'a couple of afternoons', I can tell you that.

And we won both wars (well, the Union beat the Confederacy in the Civil War), so we must've done something right.

A massive industrial/numerical advantage (ref WW2) will do that for you. Yes, you maybe can turn a person into a marginally effective soldier in a dozen weeks or so (though I wouldn't have bet any money on me being any use after basic training). The clonetroopers were supposed to be elite, or so I seem to recall. Plus the built-in loyalty/obedience thingy was probably considered a plus (backfired something fierce in the end to be sure but sure nice to have for the duration, especially as they didn't know it would).

And there are certainly enough fit adult Republic citizens, that it wouldn't be necessary to clone and grow an army from scratch! Unless the Republic's Constitution explicitly forbade citizens from becoming soldiers (even willingly?), or the citizenry was THAT averse to the very thought of military service, I just don't see why taking years to clone an army (other than because years ago something called "the Clone Wars" was mentioned once or twice in passing) was necessary at all.

I hate to tell you but most people don't particularly enjoy being shot at for a living, with said living usually not being much, especially when the threat they're protecting their nation against hasn't existed for thousands of years. We know local military/police forces exist (Naboo comes to mind), but the Republic hasn't had a need for a stand army in a very long time.

While creating a large batch of sentients specifically to be used as cannon fodder was perfectly alright for this supposedly democratic government!

Except the government had nothing to do with it, of course. The Clone army was created at the behest of Darth Sidious, the Republic merely made use of them what with them being available. Kinda pointless to raise an army of half-trained rookies when you have one of fully trained warriors already at your disposal.

All true, especially the last point. Anyway, http://scifi.about.com has an article titled, "How Many Clone Troopers Are There?" The full address is so long it doesn't display fully. It mentions that by the end of the Clone Wars there were 3 million clones (Total produced, or number surviving?). It does say explicitly that, in both the movies and the Expanded Universe, a "unit" was understood by all characters involved to mean an individual clone.

Anyway, the same article reminds us that the Clone Wars were one big smoke-and-mirrors act by Darth Sidious to allow him to gain total power. As suspenseful as it may have seemed for those caught in the thick of it, the clones and droids were ultimately just going thru the motions!

Wookiepedia's articles on the "Grand Army Of The Republic," and "Clone Stormtroopers," mentions the "Spaarti Process," a method for producing clones (including using the Jango Fett template) in only a year, tho with . . . somewhat reduced quality and reliability! The Kaminoans, producers of the original clones, took pride in their work and took the time to do a quality job, even if it meant taking 10 years to produce no more than 1.2 million clones. Those produced later (particularly after the Republic became the Empire) are the ones responsible for the jokes about the "Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy"! They WERE truly bad, Obi Wan's off-hand comment in "A New Hope" ("Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise") nonwithstanding!

And as bad as AOTC may have been, it was an improvement over "Phantom Menace" (other than Darth Maul sadly no longer being around!)!

[Batman]

It would still have taken 10 years if they had produced one single clone, and it would have taken no more than 10 years if they'd produced a quintillion. To grow a clone to adulthood the Kaminoan way takes 10 years, end of story. You increase the number of cloning facilities, you increase the number of clones. Fewer cloning facilities, fewer clones. Still takes 10 years no matter what.
And we know that by the time of the OT at the very latest, Stormies were no longer exclusively (possibly not even majorly or at all) clones. And since the guys in the white armour where pretty much everywhere in the OT either they aren't quite as elite as we're told, or not everybody wearing that armour is a actually a stormtrooper.

[Darth Mencken]

It would still have taken 10 years if they had produced one single clone, and it would have taken no more than 10 years if they'd produced a quintillion. To grow a clone to adulthood the Kaminoan way takes 10 years, end of story. You increase the number of cloning facilities, you increase the number of clones. Fewer cloning facilities, fewer clones. Still takes 10 years no matter what.
And we know that by the time of the OT at the very latest, Stormies were no longer exclusively (possibly not even majorly or at all) clones. And since the guys in the white armour where pretty much everywhere in the OT either they aren't quite as elite as we're told, or not everybody wearing that armour is a actually a stormtrooper.

All true. Thing is, the Kaminoans had only produced 200,000 clones at first, and had another 1 million in the pipeline. No more, either already ready or in the works at the time. No matter how large their cloning capacity was, they would've needed 10 more years to produce any additional clones by the methods they used up to this point (hence the Wookiepedia article mentioning subsequent, faster methods of growing clones to maturity, tho with a sometimes huge sacrifice in quality).

And in the earlier EU (I think basically all EU publications before AOTC was revealed), Imperial Stormtroopers specifically weren't supposed to be clones at all. In at least one early installment, Boba Fett was supposedly a former Stormtrooper (not an unaltered clone of the guy whose genetic material wound-up as the original source of the Republic/Empire's muscle), and Han Solo at least went thru Stormtrooper training at some early point (before the events of "A New Hope").

[Batman]

What's that 1 million number based on? 200000 is from the movie and is unspecified 'units' which are never to my knowledge verified to refer to individual soldiers, the ludicrousness of endeavouring to conquer/reconquer tens of thousands of star systems with an army that would be hard pressed to conquer modern day Europe aside, and since when did Han go through stormtrooper training? He went to the Imperial Academy to become a pilot, nothing more.

[atg]

Don't have time to look it up at the moment but I'm pretty sure wookiepedia has a page that show why the "200,000" and "a million more well on the way" cannot refer to individual clones. IIRC part of it is to do with a fleet of Venators or Acclamators which were explicitly stated to be crewed only by clones and taking the crew number per ship multiplied by the number of ships was more than 1.2 million clones.

[Srelex]

For what it's worth, the Essential Guide to Warfare seems to say that the 3 million was the initial batch, and the GAR 'grew exponentially' over the course of the war.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

It's actually the thematic issues that bother me about this one; I have my own take on it all that seems to be spiralling away from the mainstream now, but remember the old peacenik line about "What if they had a war, and nobody came?" A war fought with clones on the one side and droids on the other, fuck, it really is the war where nobody went to fight.

At this point internally, I think Palpatine's plan breaks down; this is how you fight a secret war, a war that no-one cares about, and is that not the exact opposite of what he wants? he wants something that gets massive media attention, that moves the people- creates a groundswell that he can ride to absolute power. The last thing that serves him would be a scruffy little skirmish fought in obscurity by invisible assets.

(Remember how many of the galaxy's average citizens carry a blaster- not many on Naboo, but on Coruscant? I'd reckon that outside the expansion regions- in the mid rim and beyond- and on major city- planets, an armed citizenry is the rule, not the exception. Armed small craft seem routine outside the Core, too.)

You can inflate the threat to a very large degree, but that much? The Confederacy needs to be an existential threat to the Republic for his plan to work, to make the existential changes he needs to happen, and while he might be able to make a major annoyance seem an existential threat, a flyspeck- the sort of threat that could actually be held in check by three million clones- isn't. There needs to be a bigger war than that.

The ideal use for the clones would have been as Instant Sargeants and Staff Officers, in fact- use them to form the skeleton of a much larger force, use them to simulate the long service professionals and the specialties that take a long time to train, and fill the rank and file out with citizen soldiers, ordinary people the Separatists can shoot at and who can write home to their boy, girl and thing- friends about it all and be interviewed by journalists; with small all- Clone spearhead forces to fight the actually semi- real battles that need to be won, and to shoot Jedi once the occasion arises.

Unfortunately, Lucas doesn't seem to have come up with that one.