Hoth: The Failure of Imperial Military Doctrine

[Highlord Laan]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article ... y-Doctrine

"what Darth Vader couldn't do with a full ground invasion and an orbital bombardment, a Yeti accomplished with its bare hands and the element of surprise."

Okay. A lot of us are capable of discussing tactics and logistics at least competently. Almost all of us are Star Wars fans. This is worthy of discussion.

[PainRack]

How about a highly selective view of the EU and surrounding fluff?

For example, the use of bounty hunters to capture the Millenium Falcon. So, in his view, its more efficient to dedicate multiple 1.6km long combat starships to capture a few hundred meters starship? Or that this showed that the Empire lacked the special forces capability to capture the Falcon? It gets even more dodgy when one considers that the Republic themselves did recruit bounty hunters, although they relied mostly on the Judical/Jedi corp to handle such matters.


Or the huge lumbering metal elephants comparison. So, just WHAT are AT-TEs then? Highly mobile vehicles?

Then there's also the unrealistic. He suggested an alternative plan was to deploy Imperial Commandoes to capture Luke Skywalker or disable the power generator. Barring the stupidity of simply expecting a commando patrol to capture a single target in the midst of thousands, any such attack would had taken WEEKs to succeed. Weeks while the largest, most powerful squadron of the Imperial navy waited around doing......... nothing......


And of course, ignores the fact that Vader lost the element of surprise when Ozzel jumped the fleet in too close. My own suspicion is that apart from having a clear shot at Echo Base, Vader was awaiting reinforcements from other elements of the Imperial Navy once he had confirmed the location of a Rebel Base at Hoth, time that was denied him when the Rebels detected his squadron. Ozzel on the other hand was confident that their small squadron would easily wipe out any defence if an aggressive attack was launched, and in a stunningly bad compromise, they got the worse of both worlds.

[AMX]

I think there was only very little surprise to lose after the rebels spotted the probe droid...

[ray245]

And of course, ignores the fact that Vader lost the element of surprise when Ozzel jumped the fleet in too close. My own suspicion is that apart from having a clear shot at Echo Base, Vader was awaiting reinforcements from other elements of the Imperial Navy once he had confirmed the location of a Rebel Base at Hoth, time that was denied him when the Rebels detected his squadron. Ozzel on the other hand was confident that their small squadron would easily wipe out any defence if an aggressive attack was launched, and in a stunningly bad compromise, they got the worse of both worlds.

Would that have make a difference though? Rebels have already spotted the probe droid and are already beginning to leave the system. Waiting for reinforcement might actually give the rebels even more time to escape.

[Lord Revan]

well on using a commando strike on Hoth, how to do we know that a) Vader had access to imperial commando squads b) capturing Skywalker was an objective he was allowed to use them on c)that the rebels hadn't prepared for something like that.

[Stark]

Massive galactic military bad at counter insurgency and having no long term plan for rapprochement?

I'm stunned. Really stunned. This is one of those 'problems' nerds invent with stuff I guess. I SAID DADDY WAS A POOPER!

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

How likely is it, in universe and with suspension of disbelief in full play, that the Imperial military is actually possessed of a sound doctrine well communicated and understood to begin with?

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that in very large part the Imperial military consists of the blind leading the blind; far too rapid an expansion and on too small and shallow a base, and dominated by the ideology of the New Order- the average in universe citizen is not merely uneducated on the subject, they have actively been fed information by the propaganda arms of the Empire that is dangerously wrong.

There is some knowledge to be gained from the histories of the wars of the past, but the pool of the truly competent is very small (and much more evenly divided than the raw balance of force- if you count only first class troops and units on each side there's not that much in it), the means by which senior Imperial officers achieve rank seems to be largely political- and command at the sector group level entirely so;

Absolute authority absolutely obeyed is the ideal, reliability rates far ahead of effectiveness, political officers have more real authority than line commanders, and the Empire's willingness to accept casualties to get the job done is symptomatic of that. From the viewpoint of one of those prospective casualties to be, I doubt it inspires much confidence and enthusiasm.

I don't think we're really looking at a professional military here at all. There are elements that try, but mostly they're the equivalent of maybe brownshirts, with a huge motivation/ideology gap between officer (dedicated to the New Order) and enlisted (how do I get out of this chickenshit outfit?).

[Adam Reynolds]

As I am currently somewhat bored and avoiding real work:
In a nutshell the idea of using commandos is much worse than the idea of a full scale attack by walkers. The main weakness was the lack of sufficent numbers for a blockade, especially after the damage done by the Ion Cannon but that was largely due to the incompetence of Ozzel, not Vader or a doctrinal problem within the Empire.

Regarding the use of commandos to capture Luke, the important thing he is overlooking is that when Luke was attacked by the Wampa it was before the Rebels knew that the Empire was coming due to the discovery of the probe droid, after that discovery it is highly unlikely they sent out individual scouts on tauntauns(especially one of their most valuable pilots). And in fact as Han stated the only reason they went out that far in the first place so unprotected was to place perimeter sensors that were presumably what detected the probe droid. In addition there was the problem that that the speeders weren't yet adapted to the cold and by the time a commando team would have arrived they would have likely been ready and there would be no need for tauntauns to be used. So unless the Empire had sent commandos instead of probes, they would have never been in a position to do that stunt against Luke. In addition there is also the problem that the odds of a random commando unit being in the right place to grab Luke are rather absurd especially given the narrow window in which tauntauns were used further out from the base.

This also assumes that the Rebel base was incapable of detecting a commando unit exiting hyperspace as well. Even if they could successfully sneak in further out in the system and approach at sublight, they would be unable to pull off the meteorite trick that worked so well for the probe droid to be able to appear undetected due to the larger ships commandos would need. This also assumes that the Empire has sufficient manpower to sent commandos to every world that the Rebel Alliance might possibly be which is quite unlikely as there were references to thousands of probe droids searching the galaxy. This also assumes that the Rebel forces on Hoth would fail to detect them and otherwise stop them from successfully exfiltrating with Luke, remember that the forces on Hoth had Rouge Squadron and their X-wings or snowspeeders on alert which would be able stop them from fleeing to space, assuming that the shield wasn't operational which would mean they would have to land their ship outside the shield and walk the entire way and then walk out with their unconcious prisoner, a rather risky proposition on a world for which survival at night is rather risky. In addition there was an extensive security force that would quite easily defeat a small four man team as suggested by the author if they were detected. While be true in Travissverse that small four man teams of Clones are ideal for hunting Jedi, in the rest of the universe there is much less evidence for that. Especially given that they are supposed to take him alive.

As for the idea that commandos would have successfully destroyed the Rebel shield by pointing out that this is what the Alliance successfully accomplished on Endor, he is forgetting that the only reason the Alliance got as far as they did was because it was a trap orchestrated by the Emperor. In addition even without that issue, the Rebels, knowing their weakness relative to the Empire were much less overconfident in their security overall given that their immediate response was to run at Hoth. We see this by the number of defensive emplacements on Hoth vs Endor(none). Those turrets were even manned before the probe droid was detected(shown when Han enters the hanger with his tauntaun just after Luke is grabbed by the Wampa). Also for a team trying to attack the power generators they would be forced to appear on foot due to the impossibility of penetrating the theater shield once it was up. By the time a team on foot was able to approach the base most of the Rebels would be gone. If those commandos brought speeders they would be detected by the same sensors that spotted the probe droid.

In addition he is citing the games heavily, both Battlefront II as well as Republic Commando, despite their low rank in canon. The idea that veterans of the Clone Wars fought on Hoth is also unlikely, while according to that game those clones were always Kamino based, it was never stated that the same group of clones fought the entire time. Even though the narrator appeared the same, all of the various Jango clones spoke with the same accent so if the narrator changed we wouldn't have known. As for the operations done in Republic Commando, those were all operations for which commando units are better suited(for the most part) we must also realize the game mechanics element. While the feats accomplished are quasi-canon, the way in which they were done didn't necessarily happen as in the game. I seriously doubt that clone medics are capable of reviving dead commandos an unlimited number of times. More importantly the failure of Delta Squad wouldn't have meant that the Republic would have lost the war, even if Palpatine wasn't in fact manipulating both sides, the Republic was still at a significant strategic advantage by ROTS and the Confederacy was on the defensive and their leadership was running and hiding throughout the Outer Rim. That wasn't due to commandos or even Jedi, it was due to naval superiority shown by the rapid defeat of the Confederacy fleet over Coruscant.

In addition to games he is citing the Republic Commando book series in terms of EU references despite the problems with that series and its author(which is also the main source of the special operations brain bug in the Clone Wars). Especially the idea that the Republic Commandos would be used against the Jedi and that a four man team is the proper response to an opponent who is extremely proficient at combat at a small scale. The proper Clone(or droid) response to Jedi is simply surprise and overwhelming numbers as we see in the Order 66 sequence in ROTS and The Geonosis Arena in AOTC. In addition the same autonomy of the Clone Commandos that he praises was also what caused a squad of them to allow a handful of Jedi to escape on Murkhana as described in the novel Dark Lord.

His comments about air mobility again(like the earlier Wired article) ignore the problem that the shields employed by the Rebels prevented that, hence Vader's orders to Veers about a surface attack. And the slow speed of that attack is necessitated by the fact that it must be surface. Regarding the AT-TE vs the AT-AT, I presume he is considering the AT-TE superior due to the fact that it is airmobile despite the fact that that element would be useless here given that the shield prevents the air mobility from being used. It is likely the case that the AT-AT was actually designed for its use on Hoth, attacking through theater shields and destroying them at long range(the reason for its height) so that air mobile units can move in and atack the Rebel base capturing as many as possible. Their slow speed on Hoth is also much slower than their top speed due to the terrain making faster travel quite risky, according to supplemental material they lost several walkers due to the terrrain previously.

In general much of the idea here seems to be to compare the Empire to the US and the War on Terror(from a strategy standpoint anyway). One thing they are missing is the scale involved. With the scale of Earth, terrorists lack armored vehicles and warplanes. On the same scale in Star Wars, a group with the same strategic value has three mile long naval vessels. So while special operations and law enforcement units are the ideal counter to terrorist cells on Earth, in Star Wars it requires a great deal more firepower as well as conventional forces.

[PainRack]

And of course, ignores the fact that Vader lost the element of surprise when Ozzel jumped the fleet in too close. My own suspicion is that apart from having a clear shot at Echo Base, Vader was awaiting reinforcements from other elements of the Imperial Navy once he had confirmed the location of a Rebel Base at Hoth, time that was denied him when the Rebels detected his squadron. Ozzel on the other hand was confident that their small squadron would easily wipe out any defence if an aggressive attack was launched, and in a stunningly bad compromise, they got the worse of both worlds.

Would that have make a difference though? Rebels have already spotted the probe droid and are already beginning to leave the system. Waiting for reinforcement might actually give the rebels even more time to escape.

Given the speed of Star Wars fleets and the fact that in days ,the Fleet was reinforced if we assume that there were no off screen warships and compare the numbers involved in the asteroid scenes in the TESB novelisation, or that Vader could draw on bounty hunters an undetermined time later(assuming we ignore the EU)

If we use the EU, the speed of bounty hunters jumping in and the like would mean that it took only days for Fett to reach Vader. Hell, in one case, less.

Similarly, the Rebels HAVEN"T escaped yet. They were preparing to do so and the presence of the Imperial fleet forced them to leave most of their heavy equipment behind.I also question that they could had stepped up the Rebel evacuation in just a day unless the Rebels deliberately chose to abandon their equipment.

[Terralthra]

Doesn't the novel make it clear that the "surprise" lost was that if they'd exited hyperspace further away, they could have come in on sublight and hit the shield generator from orbit, whereas exiting close, their hyperspace exit let them be spotted by the rebels before they could target and destroy the generator? I'm pretty sure that was the issue. Ozzel had planned on a saturation bombardment, which Vader wouldn't allow.

[StarSword]

^Backed up by EU materials (book 2 of The Black Fleet Crisis, I believe) specifically citing an easily detectable energy spike when a ship exits hyperspace. A Fifth Fleet scout lucked out and spotted a Yevetha thrustship dropping out of hyperspace on its way to a shipyard they didn't know about.

[biostem]

Was it ever stated just *how* the empire knew to cluster around a specific exit route from Hoth? Why couldn't the rebels simply launch ship in all directions?

For that matter, why couldn't the imperials launch AT-ATs from different directions and sort of surround Echo Base? Also, was the reason that the empire didn't send in fighters stated to be due to the cold? I know there's lines about the difficulty in adapting the speeders to the cold, so are we to assume that walkers are just more robust, (hence why they could send those w/o much prep time).

[avatarxprime]

The Empire set up a blockade around the theater shield, for the Rebels to be able to launch ships "in all directions" they'd either need to have a vastly larger base or more than one base on Hoth. Vader figured that would not be the case and just had the fleet cover the likely launch windows. That being said, it's not like there weren't SDs everywhere, Luke ends up fighting with one has he tries to escape Hoth.

As to the TIE issue, they were deployed after the shield went down since TIEs wouldn't be able to fly through the shield (repulsor tech would fail) and I'm figuring it wouldn't have been worth it to deploy them in drop pods and then move them through the shield on a carrier first.

[PainRack]

It was mentioned that the snowspeerds can't work in the cold(pending modifications)..... not TIE fighters.

[The_Saint]

I'm sure it's not high canon in any way but I remember a comic that featured some Rebels in the Ion Cannon Control Centre and a scouting party that observe the Imperials having trouble with some HAVw Juggernauts and choosing to use the AT-AT's as they're having less difficulty with the Hoth conditions.