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I just got my copy of Insider #84 and I’ve had a chance to look over the “Guide to the Grand Army of the Republic” written by Karen Traviss and Ryan Kaufman. The former is the author of Republic Commando: Hard Contact, the latter worked on Republic Commando, the game.

The Good.

The article goes into fairly extensive detail about almost every aspect of the Army’s organization. It gets into the sort of nitty gritty details that are normally not expounded upon in most publications. According to the guide the GAR is divided into two orders of battle:

The Regular Army(Similar to what was described in the AOTC:ITW, but noticeably expanded and with a few notable changes in the command structure):

Grand Army: 10 Systems Armies+ additional troops and units. Commanded by the Supreme Chancellor. Strength: plus or minus 3,000,000 men (I will discuss this number in the “Bad” section of my post.)

Systems Army: 2 Sector Armies. Strength: 294,912 men. Commanded by a High Jedi General (Jedi Council Member.)

Sector Army: 4 Corps. Strength: 147,456 men. Commanded by a Senior Jedi General (Jedi Master).

Corps: 4 legions. Strength: 36,864 men. Commanded by a Clone Marshal Commander and a Jedi General.

Legion/Brigade: 4 regiments. Strength: 9,216 men. Commanded by a Senior Clone Commander and a Jedi General.

Regiment: 4 Battalions. Strength: 2,304 men. Commanded by a Jedi Padawan Commander. (!)

Battalion: 4 companies. Strength: 576 men. Commanded by a Major.

Company: 4 platoons. Strength: 144 men. Commanded by a Captain.

Platoon: 4 squads Strength: 36 men. Commanded by a Lieutenant.

Squad: 9 men, commanded by a Sergeant.


The Republic Commandos have their own separate order of battle as follows:

Spec Ops Brigade.

10 battalions/commando groups consisting of 5,000 men, commanded by a Jedi General.

Commando Group.

500 men in 5 companies commanded by a junior general (Jedi Knight).

Company

100 men in 5 troops

Troop

20 men in 5 squads

Squad

4 men


All of the above is very interesting ignoring the issue of the overall size of the GAR, however the part of the article that intrigued me the most was the explanation of the role of the Galactic Marines. Apparently, the Marines were originally the 21st Nova Corps and a unit within the 4th Outer Rim Sector Army. They were eventually made an independent rapid reaction unit under the command of General Ki Adi Mundi and Commander Bacara, specializing in ship boarding actions and planetary assault, hence the name Galactic Marines. There is also paragraphs about the Commander Gree’s 41st Elite, which were the troops shown on Kashyykk, which was actually a legion according to the guide, and the 327th Star Corps, which were the troops that eliminated Aayla Secura on Felucia.

Overall, the GAR, is depicted as highly disciplined and professional organization, with the vast majority of the Army’s culture coming from Mandalorian traditions. As far as being depicted as a realistic military organization the article is definitely better thought out than a lot of the other technical related writings that the EU puts out.

The Bad

Troop numbers

The guide describes the GAR as having troop strength in the neighborhood of 3 million men, which is pure madness in my opinion. The article claims that the Republic began the war with 1.2 million men and the “millions more” described in AOTC: ITW was in fact only 2 million more. What makes this absurd number all the more silly is the fact that the article admits that the Confederacy fielded armies numbering in the “quadrillions”.

The rationalization for why the GAR’s frontlines weren’t rolled up like cheap carpets and the Republic wasn’t utterly crushed in the opening week of the war is three-fold. First, bog standard clones were so good and so much better than battledroids, they were averaging 200 plus kills per man over 6 month periods. Second, the Confederacy, despite having vast amounts wealth which could easily hire competent military leadership, particularly in a galaxy of countless trillions of sentient beings, apparently had suffered from such poor leadership and tactics they were able to somehow squander their obscene numerical advantage. Meanwhile, Republic’s armed forces had a seeming monopoly on the best of the galaxy’s military historians and theorists. Finally, they claim that determined sabotage efforts by the Republic’s Special Forces left “billions” of the Confederacy’s battledroids useless.

To put it simply, I don’t buy it. I almost put the magazine down after I read the 3 million men nonsense. The simple fact of the matter is quantity is a quality on its own, particularly when there is technological parity. I might have believed Traviss and Kaufman’s rationalization had the Confederacy been enormously backwards and technologically inferior to the Republic. But that is not the case, in fact in some ways the Separatists were superior. To prosecute a full scale war in a galaxy of millions of inhabited star systems, against an enemy that can churn out billions of fresh troops daily, the Republic needed at the very outset of the war, an Army numbering in the hundreds of billions minimum, and even that is a little too low. That’s the bottom line that no one at Lucasfilm or any of the writers in the EU seems to understand. None of them seem to understand how obscenely large the Star Wars galaxy is and that equally large armies and navies are needed to simply patrol and secure it much less conduct a supposedly cataclysmically destructive military conflict.

As you can probably tell by now, my opinion on the article is decidedly mixed. I liked the realistic treatment of the organization, troops, the military culture and the individual units. The “Heroes of GAR” section was quite nice as well. But the issue of the Army’s size pretty much ruined it for me. In future Traviss and Kaufman would be better off staying away from issues like troops numbers because all it does is simply make them look silly.

In addition to the 3 000000 clones nonsense, is there no hint at the multitude of local system forces filling out the rest of the Republic military?

If so, it could be rationalized that the clones were simply a special elite and that everyone else got hold of the same type of equipment to fend for their own.

But if the GAR only covers the clones themselves, then why not rectify it by saying that there were also a whole lot of non-clone Republic military personnel?

There is no mention of non clone republic military forces in the article, another little detail that greatly annoyed me. In addition, the article makes it seem that the Clones were the Republic's only ground force. Otherwise they would have mentioned a Republican Army some sort of Imperial Army predecessor when rationalizing the troop numbers disparity.

Edit: I should also mention that the article claims that the clone units were sometimes formed up into crews for Naval vessels despite their scarce numbers.

Those numbers are fucking stupid. Russia lost more than three million combat troops in WWII, fighting on a single front on a single planet over a five year period. There is no way in hell that three million clones could have fought a full scale galactic war over a similar timeframe. The only rationalization is that they were outnumbered hundreds to one by non-clone forces, which makes the 'Clone Wars' label make even less sense than it already did.

Those numbers are fucking stupid. Russia lost more than three million combat troops in WWII, fighting on a single front on a single planet over a five year period. There is no way in hell that three million clones could have fought a full scale galactic war over a similar timeframe. The only rationalization is that they were outnumbered hundreds to one by non-clone forces, which makes the 'Clone Wars' label make even less sense than it already did.

I agree with your assessment of the number of clones, but why can't the name be more a reference to the new and shocking position the Clone Army held politically? I think it very likely that if these numbers are canon that the Clone forces were essentially interesting and important only for their closeness to the Jedi and their position as a military force loyal solely to the Republic- representatives of the body as a whole, who provided a propoganda image to a war fought largely by the non-clone members of Republic loyalist militaries.

Considering the non-clone membership of much the postwar Imperial military, and the status of a large number of non-clone Clone War veterans like Jan Dodonna, I think it's very reasonable to think that there was a large non-clone military tradition in the Republic during the war, and that is was this tradition which provided the vast majority of troops to the Loyalist cause- and, eventually, to the Imperials in the post-war era.

Thirdfain wrote:

Those numbers are fucking stupid. Russia lost more than three million combat troops in WWII, fighting on a single front on a single planet over a five year period. There is no way in hell that three million clones could have fought a full scale galactic war over a similar timeframe. The only rationalization is that they were outnumbered hundreds to one by non-clone forces, which makes the 'Clone Wars' label make even less sense than it already did.

I agree with your assessment of the number of clones, but why can't the name be more a reference to the new and shocking position the Clone Army held politically? I think it very likely that if these numbers are canon that the Clone forces were essentially interesting and important only for their closeness to the Jedi and their position as a military force loyal solely to the Republic- representatives of the body as a whole, who provided a propoganda image to a war fought largely by the non-clone members of Republic loyalist militaries.

Considering the non-clone membership of much the postwar Imperial military, and the status of a large number of non-clone Clone War veterans like Jan Dodonna, I think it's very reasonable to think that there was a large non-clone military tradition in the Republic during the war, and that is was this tradition which provided the vast majority of troops to the Loyalist cause- and, eventually, to the Imperials in the post-war era.

When has a war ever been given the name of the elite forces of the winning side? It just doesn't make sense. "the galactic civil war" (or 1st galalactic civil war after the Rebellion), or "the 'droid war," or "the glorious anticorporate peoples' war," sure, but not "the clone wars." There was only one war, and the fact that a few clones participated is not its defining character as it was portrayed in the movies.

Legion = Brigade? What happened to the division as military unit?

How the hell can professional writers be this stupid? The GAR as described in this article would be hard pressed to occupy a single continent. I know that not everyone is a "tech-head," but it doesn't take much brains to realize that if the World Wars required tens of millions of troops to fight, then a galactic war would need millions of times that. This isn't the first time this kind of minimalization has happened, but it still pisses me off.

Clone Sergeant wrote: In future Traviss and Kaufman would be better off staying away from issues like troops numbers because all it does is simply make them look silly.

The Clone wars EU was generally good in this respect. It showed the Republic using non-clone forces, local militaries and fleets, and even mercenaries.

From what we've seen, the Republic Navy was not clone-crewed.

Also, Shatterpoint and The Cestus Deception show this pattern: The Republic sends some clones to support locals fighting the Confederacy (Similar to what they did on Kashyyyk in ROTS). So the clones were a sort of mobile shock force.

Have to agree that 3 million is still too few. Boost it up by a factor of 10, clearly state that there were plenty of non-clone forces, and we might be getting somewhere.

What, I can dream, can't I?

So was this what LFL meant when they said they were going to retcon the 1.2 million number? Ohhhhh 1.8 million more clones makes so much more sense.

Quadlok wrote:
When has a war ever been given the name of the elite forces of the winning side? It just doesn't make sense. "the galactic civil war" (or 1st galalactic civil war after the Rebellion), or "the 'droid war," or "the glorious anticorporate peoples' war," sure, but not "the clone wars." There was only one war, and the fact that a few clones participated is not its defining character as it was portrayed in the movies.

Turkey had the Janissary revolts, which included many soldiers besides elite Janissary units... It is obviously a little forced, but considering the canon, do you have a better explanation?

Traviss and Kaufman attempt to defend their numbers at TF.net:

+http://boards.theforce.net/Literature/b ... 19/p9/?217

Ryan_Kaufman wrote:

Qu_Klaani wrote:Its still noway near enough, unless they deployed a hanful of clones to each planet and hoped they'd be enough to contain tens of thousands of droids.

I'm sure they deployed their forces more sensibly than that. You don't try for even coverage with any army. "Ten soldiers per square foot", or something.

You deploy and take worlds with sufficiently-sized forces. Key worlds hold other systems in check. There is no need to deploy forces on every single planet.

"Island hopping" is sensible. However, even that would require an army orders of magnitude greater than 3 million.

Take Qiilura, for example. A squad of RCs ostensibly took that planet single-handed. But there was no need for them to traverse the entire globe to do so.

A single squad conquered an entire planet! Did this happen in some game?

KarenTraviss wrote:Hear what the man said. Strategic targets. You should check out the kill ratios of special forces even in the real world.

Small elite units and special forces don't win wars, and I seriously doubt they get most of their kills in open combat.

Ryan_Kaufman wrote:

Qu_Klaani wrote: Its not the number of battle droids, its the sheer size of the galaxy. There are hundreds of thousands of Republic planets, and thousands of worlds at least must have been involved

The GAR did not need to occupy all those worlds. Like we've said before, strategic targets. If you assault and take over Sluis Van, you are within striking range of many systems, including Utapau, Bpfassh, Dagobah, etc.


Clearly, though, Qu Klaani, you do not wish to be convinced of this. So I won't press the issue any further.

So let's say you conquer one major world (which 3 million men is NOT capable of doing). You may be in good striking distance of many others, but how would you launch offensives when you don't have any more men?

Hopefully someone will come out with something better, because this is daft. The numbers are far too low, and imo completely unjustifiable. As was already pointed out, we lost more people fighting one war on one planet than a galaxy spanning Republic can bring to bear. The "200 to 1" kill ratio isn't even supported by the movies as far as I can tell. We saw multiple clonetroopers killed at both Utapau and Kashyyyk. And while the Seperatist forces did look larger than the Republic forces, it didn't look to be enough for this.

Agreed. This minimalism shit (while getting somewhat better) is fucking irritating.

Edit: maybe I should go ahead and register at TFN after all.

I'm just thankful the movies don't say 1.2 million clones explicitly, or do they?

EDIT: Those of you with TFN access, please post your statements there, as you're just preaching to the choir over here. =P

VT-16 wrote:I'm just thankful the movies don't say 1.2 million clones explicitly, or do they?

Does that even matter? Official interpretations trump fan speculation, even if it's stupid.

In that case, they shoot themselves in the foot by stating there´s thousands of Venators, all crewed by clones.

I already posted at TFN, that for 3 million clones 188 Acclamators would be enough to travel the galaxy.

This is just the states for “A” grand army. There may be serial used on different fronts or just the one that the Emperor had direct control of. It also mentions independent regiments. They shouldn’t be included in a grand army. Well that’s my take on it.

Relevant points from the TF.n thread:

Ryan Kaufman wrote:You deploy and take worlds with sufficiently-sized forces. Key worlds hold other systems in check. There is no need to deploy forces on every single planet.

Take Qiilura, for example. A squad of RCs ostensibly took that planet single-handed. But there was no need for them to traverse the entire globe to do so.

Remember: key personnel in key locations, supported by covert anti-support ops.

Ryan Kaufman wrote:Qu_Klaani posted:
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Its not the number of battle droids, its the sheer size of the galaxy. There are hundreds of thousands of Republic planets, and thousands of worlds at least must have been involved
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The GAR did not need to occupy all those worlds. Like we've said before, strategic targets. If you assault and take over Sluis Van, you are within striking range of many systems, including Utapau, Bpfassh, Dagobah, etc.

Karen Traviss wrote:Factors you need to consider are:

1. In a war, you're not always fighting on all fronts all the time.

2. Theatres of war shift. Not every planet is involved every day of the war. Think shifting task force.

3. And...it's Star Wars! Chaps, when you can accept that a bunch of aliens can breed humans to order and grow them to maturity in ten years...that a handful of Jedi can take on armies with magic and a fluorescent light fitting...when you don't worry about the total absence of time dilation when ships move light years between worlds...how can you argue about real numbers?


Comrades, I'm the real-life defence specialist, and if I could swallow this fictional premise without too much pain, I don't see why you can't...

how can you argue about real numbers?

There's sci-fi and there's stretching credibility. This is the latter.

Tell her that you may be a RL military expert rather than an average sci-fi novelist, but that doesn´t mean you can´t properly combine the two aspects.

You know, at a 200-1 kill ratio in favor of Clones, you get a whopping 600 million droids. Whooptie-fucking-do, with that many droids you would be hard pressed to hold 1980s Earth (I'm not using modern since we are somewhat shorter on nukes and other military hardware), let alone fight a Galactic-scale war.

People just don't seem to understand what the fuck does "Galactic scale" mean. To put it simply, you would need tens of millions of troops to assault and hold one planet. Never mind fighting along a theater of operations that is likely to span dozens of systems.

It would be realistic for there to be 500 of these 3 million Clone armies, and the great majority of the fighting forces on the Republic's side being local armies and militias. The current number is a sheer failure to understand just how fucking big a galactic-scale conflict is bound to be.

Anyone debating an idiot minimalist can feel free to quote me.

Karen Traviss wrote:And...it's Star Wars! Chaps, when you can accept that a bunch of aliens can breed humans to order and grow them to maturity in ten years...that a handful of Jedi can take on armies with magic and a fluorescent light fitting...when you don't worry about the total absence of time dilation when ships move light years between worlds...how can you argue about real numbers?


Comrades, I'm the real-life defence specialist, and if I could swallow this fictional premise without too much pain, I don't see why you can't...

I guess S.O.D. means nothing to Traviss. I'm definitely never buying anymore of her books. This is exactly the sort of bullshit attitude SW doesn't need in its fiction.

I'm happy that my squad size count is the official number.

But I'd much rather be wrong on that and have a good number of zeroes at the end of those total numbers for the Clones.

I guess S.O.D. means nothing to Traviss. I'm definitely never buying anymore of her books. This is exactly the sort of bullshit attitude SW doesn't need in its fiction.

Her's is certainly a moronic statement to make, but it won't stop me from supporting her work. This aside (although it is a big issue) her book(s) are far more gritty, believable, and realistically descriptive than many other EU writers. Besides, it's not like any other current EU author would say or write anything different, especially if it went against the edict of LFL. Still, it is disappointing. I actually emailed her about it, and all I got was a referal to the TF.n response. Shame.