Fulda Gap Force Sub

[Balrog]

In the late '80s, Soviet leadership snaps; a wrinkly old man wearing dark robes shooting lightning from his fingertips has influenced them to launch their invasion of the West now before their eventual collapse. The soldiers are roused from their barracks, the machines of war are started and the juggernaut that is the Red Army begins marching towards West Germany.

However, something else from Star Wars has made a miraculous appearance. Replacing the US Army's V Corps, tasked with stopping those damn commies in the Fulda Gap, is the entire ground force of Republic Army from the Battle of Geonosis. Every clone trooper, tank, LAAT and SPHA now has the task of stopping the Soviet 8th Guards Army from breaking through the Fulda Gap and capturing Frankfurt. The scenario is broken up as follows:

Scenario 1: Republic Army vs. 8th Guards Army. No other forces allowed. Battlefield restricted to the Fulda Gap and surrounding terrain only. No nukes.
Scenario 2: Fulda Gap only. All forces tasked with defending the gap, American and German, along with the Republic Army against all Soviet forces tasked with taking the gap and capturing Frankfurt. Same aforementioned battlefield. No nukes.
Scenario 3: Total War. All forces allowed, nukes included.

As an addendum, all LAATs in use are of the "low altitude" variety only. I know there are some versions capable of going into space and whatnot, those are not being used. No other starships, spaceships, starfighters or other similarly capable craft in use either. The Self-Propelled Heavy Artillery however may change their Turbolaser armament for one of the other variants which do allow for non-LOS firing.

[Sarevok]

Hard to see them lose. Clonetroopers will massacre any number of Soviet infantry that comes their way. And the AT-TEs and LAATs virtually render Soviet armor irrelevant. While LAATs are ground attack aircraft they would also inflict a heavy toll on any puny air breathing dead dinosaur powered planes that try to attack GAR forces on the ground.

[Captain Seafort]

Scenario 1: Republic Army...No nukes.

How exactly does this work, given that the GAR's version of TOW has a 100kT warhead?

[Batman]

Scenario 1: Republic Army...No nukes.

How exactly does this work, given that the GAR's version of TOW has a 100kT warhead?

I assumed this to mean no nukes on the real world side of things, i.e. no nukes for the Soviets. And this does seem somewhat one-sided.

[Zaune]

I assumed this to mean no nukes on the real world side of things, i.e. no nukes for the Soviets. And this does seem somewhat one-sided.

Not if the grasp of combined-arms tactics (and indeed basic fire-and-movement) they displayed in Episode II is anything to go by, though they may have got better after that; I rather gave up on the franchise at that point.

[Batman]

I'd take a look at the firepower/armour resilience discrepancy if I were you. The Soviets need tanks/artillery to take on GAR infantry and the LAATs outgun pretty much anything on a modern day battlefield six ways from sunday (3E11J per shot for the mini-superlasers).
GAR standard issue rifles are a threat to modern day armoured vehicles. They don't need a grasp of combined arms tactics thanks to having a couple ten thousand years tech advantage.

[Sea Skimmer]

Considering the entire clone army likely outnumbers the Soviets in the first place, this is a pretty pointless thread. One metric fuck load of clones would be massacred by communist artillery though. A communist combined arms army had eight or nine battalions of multiple rocket launchers alone.

[Adam Reynolds]

Considering the entire clone army likely outnumbers the Soviets in the first place, this is a pretty pointless thread. One metric fuck load of clones would be massacred by communist artillery though. A communist combined arms army had eight or nine battalions of multiple rocket launchers alone.

This is one thing I've always wondered about Star Wars air defenses, do they have the ability to shoot down incoming artillery rounds in a similar way to something like the C-RAM system?

[Sea Skimmer]

They can’t shoot down painfully slow anti tank missiles coming at them, nor rather slow moving space to space missiles, and walkers depend on slow firing blasters to bring down attacking aircraft, so I'd say no they don't field a system like that. Most likely because they waste all the money they have in the respective budgets buying giant mechs.

Anyway give the Soviets nukes and they'll steam roll the clones under radioactive smokescreen before the fools can duck and cover.

[Shroom Man 777]

The painfully slow anti-tank missiles have jammers. The slow moving space to space missiles are jamming the defenses. And the walkers depend on slow firing blasters to bring down attacking aircraft that also jam them. So I'd say they'd jam a system like that. The slow anti-tank missiles and slow moving space to space missiles also have neutronium penetrators that slow them down, they have neutronium penetrators because they must penetrate enemy neutronium armor. If they remove the neutronium penetrators (because the Soviets don't have neutronium armor) those painfully slow anti-tank missiles and slow moving space to space missiles and slow aircraft will move much faster at factions of .c!

Also, on Earth there won't be any Shroud of the Dark Side so unlike in AOTC where Jango Fett can just punch Obi-Wan in the face, the Jedi Generals of the Clone Army can use precog to predict where supersonic Soviet missiles and other fast attacks will strike. They will also use the Force to fool enemy sentries, and will infiltrate the Soviet Stavka and use their Force powers to Force Choke the arteries of Mikhail Gorbachev's brain, giving him a stroke.



(If a bunch of teddy bears with rocks and arrows can hurt a load of Stormtroopers, I'd say it's reasonable to assume that Soviet troops can at least injure a whole lot of Clonetroopers even with small arms. Unless there is an episode of the Cold War where we see packing crates deflect AK-47s, in which case the Soviet troops are doomed. lol they should put trigger guards on their Kalashnikovs.)

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

(If a bunch of teddy bears with rocks and arrows can hurt a load of Stormtroopers, I'd say it's reasonable to assume that Soviet troops can at least injure a whole lot of Clonetroopers even with small arms. Unless there is an episode of the Cold War where we see packing crates deflect AK-47s, in which case the Soviet troops are doomed. lol they should put trigger guards on their Kalashnikovs.)

Those teddy bears were fighting in a thick forest, where they could take advantage of cover and the element of surprise to get the drop on the stormtroopers. The Fulda Gap is mostly wide open plains. Soviet infantry battling clone troopers head-on won't end well for the Soviets.

[Shroom Man 777]

Would Soviet infantry be running around in open plains? I don't see American soldiers charging around when M1 Abrams were advancing in the open desert at Desert Storm and engaging the enemy tank army. I thought infantry would dismount and fight in, I dunno, like the cities or something.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

Would Soviet infantry be running around in open plains? I don't see American soldiers charging around when M1 Abrams were advancing in the open desert at Desert Storm and engaging the enemy tank army. I thought infantry would dismount and fight in, I dunno, like the cities or something.

You're right in that the Soviet infantry wouldn't actually be running around on the plains. Sending them in to take Frankfurt and the nearby towns and villages would still be a very chancy proposition, assuming the clone troopers are smart enough to use the urban terrain to their own advantage.

[Shroom Man 777]

Standard Clone tactic is to advance at the enemy wave after wave, as seen in Geneosis. Usually they do this while being led by Jedi Generals. Unless this is also an effect of the Shroud of the Dark Side.

[Simon_Jester]

Given the relative tactical sophistication and willingness to use ballistic artillery on both sides, the clonetroopers are going to take terrible, humiliating losses.

And I honestly suspect the clones will have trouble shooting down aircraft overflying their lines; the surface-to-air targeting capabilities just don't seem to be all there, on either side of the line. You can call it jamming if you want, but at a certain point (as Shroom alludes to), jamming just becomes a handwave to excuse the failure of systems to perform as implied by their asserted capabilities, a way to cancel out 99% of their performance whenever the plot demands it.

I'm not sure how respected that should be in a versus scenario.

Though unless the Red Air Force is dropping atomic weapons, I doubt that'll do them much good. And either way, they still have a tremendous problem dealing with the clones' armor and air support, and that's going to be very significant- probably decisive, given the terrain.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

It's actually worse than that.

The clone troopers' basic playbook only makes sense, I think, if you assume that concealment is actually impossible, that misdirection is futile and all actions tend to dissolve into a head on clash. Or outrageous, suicidal stupidity, which is to me a bigger stretch of SoD.

Anyway, the idea that there is no fog of war and superior comms tend to bypass the operational level entirely and it all dissolves down to grand tactics, that a frontal assault that can then be steered by tactical moves is the only way to do it, that makes slightly more sense of the clashes of the clone wars but unfortunately means that sensors have to have primacy.

That inherently devalues deception, at least strategic deception, and sets a pretty low limit on the usefulness of tactical jamming- leading to the conclusion that their AA fire control really is pretty shit, and Frontal Aviation are going to have it easier than they would under other circumstances.

[Shroom Man 777]

If they were taking in the Galactic Empire circa Hoth, it would be a one-sided route and you could possibly have Hinds or MiG-21s or Su-25s just trip those stupid FAT-FATs up.

Too bad the incompetent clonetroopers who charge en masse towards the enemy's armor and artillery and endless robot hordes are actually less incompetent than a bunch of lame losers whose speedy ground assault comprises of lame lumbering loser land-leviathans. The clonetroopers at least have less lame lumbering loser land-leviathans.

Either way, the Star Wars side wins. But getting terrible, humiliating losses will be terribly humiliating for them. It's almost as bad as redshirts losing to a Napoleonic army, except the redshirts have the excuse of being dorks. Whereas these SW guys, despite being millions of years more technologically advanced and with enormous war machines, are just as bloody incompetent because their millions of years of technological advancement just gives them enormously stupid war machines.

[Simon_Jester]

It's actually worse than that.

The clone troopers' basic playbook only makes sense, I think, if you assume that concealment is actually impossible, that misdirection is futile and all actions tend to dissolve into a head on clash. Or outrageous, suicidal stupidity, which is to me a bigger stretch of SoD.

Anyway, the idea that there is no fog of war and superior comms tend to bypass the operational level entirely and it all dissolves down to grand tactics, that a frontal assault that can then be steered by tactical moves is the only way to do it, that makes slightly more sense of the clashes of the clone wars but unfortunately means that sensors have to have primacy.

That inherently devalues deception, at least strategic deception, and sets a pretty low limit on the usefulness of tactical jamming- leading to the conclusion that their AA fire control really is pretty shit, and Frontal Aviation are going to have it easier than they would under other circumstances.

On Geonosis at least, part of the problem was the context: in a lot of places you'd have the natives and droid formations massed in underground fortifications, while the clones needed to expand from their landing zones as fast as possible. A simple strategic screwup like putting the LZ's too close to the enemy's defensive strongholds might create a situation where the ratio of force to space grew ridiculously high and you wound up with this kind of very intense, high-casualty clash.

Sort of like the classical image of, say, the Battle of Prokhorovka, in which the sheer number of tanks on both sides saturated the landscape and resulted in the tactical situation becoming a mess, one that was resolved by close combat between the tanks as much as by anything else.

If the clonetroopers found themselves under fire almost immediately from the time they made planetfall, there may honestly not have been time to organize anything much in the way of a deception plan, or even a coordinated plan for using armor and artillery-analogues to blast the enemy out of their positions.

Which is a ridiculous fuckup, yes, but arguably exactly the sort of thing you expect when you hand the job of planning the assault over to a bunch of clone 'officers' with minimal capacity for independent thought... all of whom are hardwired to defer to a monk.

*Whether the classical image of the battle is entirely accurate is, of course, a very different question.

[Eternal_Freedom]

What are the odds that the Jedi present, including Mace, Yoda, Obi-Wan, Anakin and so on, load up the LAATs with clone commandos (Like Delta Squad) and zoom off to Moscow, leaving the clone forces behind to stand on the defence?

Even if they didn't bother landing, those 50/100 kt shaped-charge blast-effect weapons the gunships were packign would make a lovely mess of the Kremlin. I would also think they are pretty effective against bunkers, but I may well be wrong on that.

[Connor MacLeod]

Hard to see them lose. Clonetroopers will massacre any number of Soviet infantry that comes their way. And the AT-TEs and LAATs virtually render Soviet armor irrelevant. While LAATs are ground attack aircraft they would also inflict a heavy toll on any puny air breathing dead dinosaur powered planes that try to attack GAR forces on the ground.

We don't really know how durable LAAT's or SPHA-T's are, though. Unless you have proof on hand.

How exactly does this work, given that the GAR's version of TOW has a 100kT warhead?

Uh, what? When the fuck was that ever stated? A 100 kiloton shaped charge blast would have enough momentum to knock over most vehicles (quite possibly including Juggernauts or a fucking AT-AT, since the recoil from guns of comparable magnitude is a not-inconsiderable issue with those same vehicles). Considering we've seen LAAT's attack targets up to and including smaller starships, there can be quite a few things the nuke-level munitions are intended to take out besides ground vehicles.

Your assessment would also fly in the face of the gunship being blatantly armed with sub-kiloton range munitions, nevermind that maximum power HEAVY laser cannons are single digit kiloton at best (yet ground vehicles are supposed to be tougher? This isn't the Renegade Legion universe.)

I'd take a look at the firepower/armour resilience discrepancy if I were you. The Soviets need tanks/artillery to take on GAR infantry and the LAATs outgun pretty much anything on a modern day battlefield six ways from sunday (3E11J per shot for the mini-superlasers).

Yes, although we dont know how long a "max power shot" is so the sustained output may be far less, nevermind not knowing other possible limtations of the ball turrets (does max power carry tradeoffs in cooling or wearing out ocmponents?) It's hard to tell from the movies whether we've ever seen maximum output used in the ground battles or not, although n practical terms that only means that it might take somewhat longer to melt/vaporize ground tanks (figuratively speaking).

All that said I would not assume that gunships are totally immune from threat, unless we're assuming they are shielded (up in the air.) since most of the primary eapons the gunship uses seem to be heat rays (EG the ball turrets) rather than "explosive-like" pulse weapon (eg the way some blasters blow massive craters in walls).

GAR standard issue rifles are a threat to modern day armoured vehicles. They don't need a grasp of combined arms tactics thanks to having a couple ten thousand years tech advantage.

God I hope you aren't claiming this on a straight "energy ot energy" comparison between RL weapons and blaster estimates.

[Connor MacLeod]

Considering the entire clone army likely outnumbers the Soviets in the first place, this is a pretty pointless thread. One metric fuck load of clones would be massacred by communist artillery though. A communist combined arms army had eight or nine battalions of multiple rocket launchers alone.

Not just artillery really. Any sort of bipod or tripod mounted machine gun probably has a good chance of disabling or killing clones (sheer momentum will fuck up a clone if it hits in the head or a limb even if it doesn't dent the armor.) as sufficient quantity of general HE and fragmentation munitions (Grenades, grenade launchers, rocket launchers, man portable mortars all probably stand a chance) Generally anything that throws out a huge volume of metal will probably insure at least some hits on weak points in clone armor (the bodyglove, although any blast effect ought to be lethal no matter where it hits). Aimed shots with high powered (probably bolt action or sniper) rifles should also be a threat even if the bullets don't penetrate (again momentum.)

For that matter they don't really need nukes. I'm pretty sure the Russians like and make quite a bit of use of thermobarics and FAEs. Those could be a problem for ground forces too (and you can deploy those from artillery and rocket/grenade launchers as I reclal as well.)

They can’t shoot down painfully slow anti tank missiles coming at them, nor rather slow moving space to space missiles, and walkers depend on slow firing blasters to bring down attacking aircraft, so I'd say no they don't field a system like that. Most likely because they waste all the money they have in the respective budgets buying giant mechs.

The Prequel ICSes did imply that missiles and such could be prone to interception (one supposed advantage of energy weapons over projectile) but it was implied that this only occured over much longer ranges. I also vaguely recall mention of rocket/missile interception in the ROTS novelization, but I dont remember if it was from starship point defense or vehicle.
In theory their tech should allow them to design such a system and it probaby would work given they use magic lasers, but I doubt it ever occurs to them since the Clone Wars represent their first stumbling steps into actual warfare after god knows how many centuries or millenia (not to mention they probably fell for propoganda and hired the Mandalorian instructors over someone more competent )

That said I have heard rumors circling on the web that tank designers have considered walking tanks so who knows we may actually see that in the future (Not that that means SW designs or mecha as depicted in general ARE suddenly practical.)

Standard Clone tactic is to advance at the enemy wave after wave, as seen in Geneosis. Usually they do this while being led by Jedi Generals. Unless this is also an effect of the Shroud of the Dark Side.

They did that in AOTC and (I believe) some of the CW novels and tv episodes, but they haven't done that in all cases. (Not in ROTS that I recall on Kashyyk, although Ki-Adi-Mundi made one such I recall before getting gunned down, but they were also taking cover and engaging at range.) The AOTC novel also clarified the Geonosis battle

see here[/url] - it doesn't seem like it was just "run across kilometers of plain in Napoleonic-style infantry charge" type tactics. More to the point, we only actually saw glimpses of the battle - the ITW maps show that the battle encompassed more terrain and a far larger front than we actually saw, so generalizing about the overall tactics from a few snippets is a bit silly.

That said, Soviets are almost certainly going to be more competent than the existing Grand Army regardless of time frame, and that will hurt the clones. I just don't think you can expect them to mindlessly charge over and over again as if they were zerglings. It's not as if the clone commanders and Jedi HATE CLONES is it?

[Batman]

All that said I would not assume that gunships are totally immune from threat, unless we're assuming they are shielded (up in the air.) since most of the primary eapons the gunship uses seem to be heat rays (EG the ball turrets) rather than "explosive-like" pulse weapon (eg the way some blasters blow massive craters in walls).

I don't know of any hard information one way or the other WRT shields. Some of the Clone Wars cartoons visuals could probably be interpreted to mean they are (near miss 'flak' bursts going off without much of anything happening to the LAAT or the people in the open side doors) but I'd hardly call that evidence. Given the craft's own air-to-air ordinance is decidedly sub-kiloton I'd venture even if they are shielded, it's nothing to write home about by Wars standards.

GAR standard issue rifles are a threat to modern day armoured vehicles. They don't need a grasp of combined arms tactics thanks to having a couple ten thousand years tech advantage.

God I hope you aren't claiming this on a straight "energy ot energy" comparison between RL weapons and blaster estimates.

Kindly note that I said 'threat', not 'instakill', and 'armoured vehicle', not 'tank'
No, I don't expect Sgt Spiffy Nickname to take on an MBT all by his lonesome. But I can see a squad of Clonetroopers taking apart an APC or IFV.

[Captain Seafort]

Uh, what? When the fuck was that ever stated?

The E2 ICS.

Considering we've seen LAAT's attack targets up to and including smaller starships, there can be quite a few things the nuke-level munitions are intended to take out besides ground vehicles.

When was that, and what were the circumstances? Although given this I'll concede the TOW analogy - the point that LAAT's carry thermonuclear weapons as one of their standard loads stands.

Your assessment would also fly in the face of the gunship being blatantly armed with sub-kiloton range munitions

Why? The fact that they weren't using them on Geonosis (not surprising, given that it was a close-quarters brawl) does not preclude

nevermind that maximum power HEAVY laser cannons are single digit kiloton at best

Where's this from? The AT-AT's main guns go up to at least double-digit kT and possibly single-digit Mt (from here). The later, if true, suggests that the Accy's light guns are heavy laser cannon.

[Adam Reynolds]

They can’t shoot down painfully slow anti tank missiles coming at them, nor rather slow moving space to space missiles, and walkers depend on slow firing blasters to bring down attacking aircraft, so I'd say no they don't field a system like that. Most likely because they waste all the money they have in the respective budgets buying giant mechs.

Anyway give the Soviets nukes and they'll steam roll the clones under radioactive smokescreen before the fools can duck and cover.

You mean like this:

While twilight enfolded the sinkhole, over the bright desert above assault craft skimmed the dunes in a tightening ring centered on the city. Hailfire droids rolled out from caves in the wind scoured mesas, unleashing firestoms of missiles towards the oncoming craft fore exactly 2.5 seconds apiece which was how long it took for the vigilance's sensor operators to transfer data to its turbolaser batteries.
Thunderbolts rained down through the atmosphere and hailfire droids disintegrated. Pinpoint counterfire from the bubble turrets of LAAT/i's met missiles in blossoming fireballs that were ripped to shreds of smoke as the oncoming craft blasted through them.

or this:

We're not going to have much chance of hitting them with proton torpedoes, if that's what you're thinking", Ardiff warned. "In close, their angular speed is too high for the torpedoes to track; and at any real distance they'll have all the time they need to track and destroy them.