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In the Thrawn Trilogy it is stated that the clones at mount tantis are being made every 20-25 days. According to Pellaeon in the Hand of Thrawn series, Thrawn was around for a year.
By my calculations that means about 350,000 clones could have been made, not enough to fill the 400,000 needed to man the captured Katana fleet.
Was the New Republic study wrong about the 20-25 days or was Mara wrong in saying there were approx 20,000 cloning tanks (of which 80% were recoverable).

There's also the possibility that the Empire was able to scrounge up 50,000, non-clone recruits. In fact, I'd even go so far to say that it's likely, given the surge of Imperial support that was occuring in the galaxy concurrently with Thrawn's campaign (over a dozen sectors willingly re-joined the Empire in this time), they could have come up with far more recruits than 50,000.

Remember, that the Spaarti Clones were not only being used to man the Katana Dreanaughts, but also as pilots and stormtroopers. Normal recruits must have been used to complement these clone forces.

I thought Pellaeon mentioned something about not needing to bother with recruiting or conscription once they had mount tantiss.
Manning the dreadnoughts and creating pilot and trooper clones, such as those chasing luke/han around the Katana, seems to be out of the production capacity of mount tantiss.

Keep in mind, that Thrawn and Pellaeon were talking about establishing new cloning-facilities in TLC.

Of course they could only relocate the Spaarti-cylinder from MountTantiss, but why should it be impossible to build more of them when you have working models for studies (especially those 20% damaged to start with)?

Remeber that although Thrawn captured most of the Katana fleet he didn't get all of it so that could also explaine some of the discrepencey.

Werent there like 20 Dreadnauts that were unacounted for ?

Also, you have to remember, the empire does do conscriptions....

Solauren wrote:Also, you have to remember, the empire does do conscriptions....

Didn't Thrawn specifically state that he wasn't going to do conscriptions when he attacked Ukio?

Or was he just BS'ing to get them to surrender?

I thought Tantiss clones wewre grown in only two weeks. not 25 days.

Admiral Drason wrote:Remeber that although Thrawn captured most of the Katana fleet he didn't get all of it so that could also explaine some of the discrepencey.

Werent there like 20 Dreadnauts that were unacounted for ?

Garm Bel Iblis had 6 of the Katana Dreadnaughts in his private fleet. The New Republic captured the last 15 of them at the end of Dark Force Rising. Thrawn only got 179.

Jim Raynor wrote:Thrawn only got 179.

at most ,since there can be some that were either damaged beond repair or taken someone else that we don't know about.

Darksider wrote:

Solauren wrote:Also, you have to remember, the empire does do conscriptions....

Didn't Thrawn specifically state that he wasn't going to do conscriptions when he attacked Ukio?

Or was he just BS'ing to get them to surrender?

Yes, but what's to stop the thousands of systems which willingly joined the Empire during Thrawn's campaign to have men voluntarily be recruited into the Empire?

Darksider wrote:

Solauren wrote:Also, you have to remember, the empire does do conscriptions....

Didn't Thrawn specifically state that he wasn't going to do conscriptions when he attacked Ukio?

Or was he just BS'ing to get them to surrender?

No he wasn't bullshiting. The Ukioans wouldn't be conscripted, or pay war level tax, but they had to contribute to the war effort in other ways ... basically feed his new army.

Also Thrawn wasn't in shortage of ground troops, and seemed to be cloning fighters/techies/and perhaps more. Most of them were said to be of competant people.

Darksider wrote:

Solauren wrote:Also, you have to remember, the empire does do conscriptions....

Didn't Thrawn specifically state that he wasn't going to do conscriptions when he attacked Ukio?

Or was he just BS'ing to get them to surrender?

That was one planet. The Empire has a lot.

He said he wouldn't conscript people from Ukio, that was all.

Jim Raynor wrote:

Admiral Drason wrote:Remeber that although Thrawn captured most of the Katana fleet he didn't get all of it so that could also explaine some of the discrepencey.

Werent there like 20 Dreadnauts that were unacounted for ?

Garm Bel Iblis had 6 of the Katana Dreadnaughts in his private fleet. The New Republic captured the last 15 of them at the end of Dark Force Rising. Thrawn only got 179.

Han Solo had one of the Katana dreadnaughts remotely ram one of the ISD's, so in fact Thrawn only got 178.

In The Last Command, Captain Pellaeon reflects that it has been nearly a month since the Katana fleet skirmish, and approximately two months since HIMS Chimaera first traveled to Wayland. Given that the New Republic's scientists determined that Grand Admiral Thrawn's clones were being gestated in approximately 15 - 20 days (according to the Princess Leia) and that Thrawn had only 20,000 Spaarti clone cylinders (originally Mara Jade's guess as to the number, subsequently adopted by other sources such as The Essential Chronology as the precise figure), the Mount Tantiss Project could only have decanted somewhere between 70,000 and 94,000 clones by the time of the Ukian operation, or approximately equivalent to seven to nine of the standard Marine detachments aboard an Imperial Star Destroyer (broadly comparable in size to a Marine legion or an Army division/battlegroup, according to the Imperial Sourcebook, Second Edition).

Pellaeon assumes that the Empire has no further need of conscripting soldiers, sailors, and marines, and Thrawn apparently agrees with this when he guarantees the Overliege of Ukio that there will be no conscription of Ukians for the Imperial Armed Forces. However, even a cursory analysis of the scale of Thrawn's operations – not least the fact that he had to man 178 new modified Dreadnaughts, each of which required a ship's company of over 2,000, for a total of not less than 356,000 officers and enlisted personnel – demonstrates that Pellaeon was simply incorrect. Even with the Mount Tantiss Project operating at maximum productivity, the Empire would indeed have a continuing need for recruitment or conscription to sustain its operations. The benefit of the Mount Tantiss Project was rather like the benefit of the Katana fleet itself – the ability to deploy an asset immediately without the coincidental expense of constructing or training it.

Cloning and ship theft are not substitutes for training and ship construction. They are stopgap measures that produce an immediate benefit at relatively little cost. Simply put, Pellaeon was wrong and Thrawn was merely offering the Ukian Overliege relatively attractive terms of surrender. The fact that conscription and recruitment did not take place on Ukio does not indicate that it did not take place elsewhere, either.

Praxis wrote:

Jim Raynor wrote:

Admiral Drason wrote:Remeber that although Thrawn captured most of the Katana fleet he didn't get all of it so that could also explaine some of the discrepencey.

Werent there like 20 Dreadnauts that were unacounted for ?

Garm Bel Iblis had 6 of the Katana Dreadnaughts in his private fleet. The New Republic captured the last 15 of them at the end of Dark Force Rising. Thrawn only got 179.

Han Solo had one of the Katana dreadnaughts remotely ram one of the ISD's, so in fact Thrawn only got 178.

Wrong, Talon Karrde had counted 15 remaining Katana/Dreadnought-Class-Cruiser BEFORE one of them was sent against the second ISD arriving at the battle.

Thrawn seemed to only be cloning for skills which would otherwise take a long time and a significant amount of resources to produce in a conscript. It takes a long time to train a competent pilot, engineer, or commando. Your run of the mill technician or cook probably wouldn't take much longer to train then to clone takes tot grow. It wasn't so much a dearth of recruits that neccesitated cloning, but a lack of time to train recruits for more demanding positions.

Your also forgetting the fact that the guy that supplied Bel Iblis with his ships was very well off, and could well have sold more of the Dreadnaughts to other groups that weren't mentioned in the books.
Remember the informant was found on an exclusive gambling ship

Interesting idea, but than somebody else aside from Bel Iblis people must have been stupid enough NOT to notice, what kind of Dreadnoughts he got.

Aside from that there wouldn't be to many groups or persons, who could afford such ships and would buy them, since they could as well try to aquire new and more modern ships.

Excellent post, Publius!
I was thinking about the number of Spaarti cloning cylinders. According to the Zahn short story Hero of Cartao, Doriana reports to Darth Sidious (without knowing Sidious and Palpatine is the same person) that Supreme Chancellor Palpatine ordered him to take the surviving clone cylinders to Wayland, and that the number was "several thousand". Was Mara's figure ever confirmed?

EDIT: I totally missed that Publius mentioned the The Essential Chronology. Sorry.