What if the Empire invaded modern day Earth?

[Ghost Rider]

The Speeders, no. But the KT estimates are done from the vaporization from the DS1 battle and accounts from Rogue Squadron books.

[Mobius IO]

What? In ANH, one of them travels at least hundreds of thousands of kilometers from Alderaan's rubble to the Death Star in minutes.

That was in space, the question is how well do they perform in an atmosphere?

No, they weren't. If you watch the movie, they were slaughtering the Ewoks until Chewbacca took down their walkers. Nor is there any proof that the Ewoks did much more than knock the stormtroopers about. Hell, as I keep saying, a couple dozen US Marines versus a thousand Celtic warriors swarming them a jungle--what's the conclusion?

Again at least one At-ST was crushed by a couple of logs. And even if the stormtroopers are only knocked out they are still out of the fight and easily disarmed/captured. Remember every blaster/set of armor/walker the Empire loses is one that it has no way to replace even if the can recruit local humans.

[Mobius IO]

How powerful were the snowspeeder blasters? They were just about harmless to the AT-ATs, and I believe they're canonically in the kiloton range. (Could be wrong about this) If that's the case, then we would need at least many nukes to take them out. Of course, a single nuke would likely knock them over even if they weren't damaged by it, rendering them useless.

Honest question. If the speeders blasters are in the kiloton range why aren't they doing a lot more damage to the scenery on Hoth?

[Junghalli]

What? In ANH, one of them travels at least hundreds of thousands of kilometers from Alderaan's rubble to the Death Star in minutes.

Acceleration doesn't necessarily equal manueverability; it's quite possible for a craft to have fantastic acceleration but take a long time to turn. Just saying.

And do we have anything capable of tying them up? And why do I see no justification for the notion that modern battlefield munitions could harm them?

What about tipping them over?

[Srelex]

That was in space, the question is how well do they perform in an atmosphere?

Logically, should be the same. No reason why they shouldn't suddenly lose engine power.

Again at least one At-ST was crushed by a couple of logs. And even if the stormtroopers are only knocked out they are still out of the fight and easily disarmed/captured. Remember every blaster/set of armor/walker the Empire loses is one that it has no way to replace even if the can recruit local humans.

It's not even confirmed if they were knocked out; we just saw them getting knocked onto the floor or being pushed over by hordes of them, which would happen to anyone taken by surprise in such an environment.

[Mobius IO]

That was in space, the question is how well do they perform in an atmosphere?

Logically, should be the same. No reason why they shouldn't suddenly lose engine power.

Not to be rude but in space you can continually accelerate where as on Earth you have to deal with air resistance, gravity, and friction. Tie fighters are going to be far more limited in an atmosphere then in outer space, the only question is how much that is.

[Mobius IO]

It's not even confirmed if they were knocked out; we just saw them getting knocked onto the floor or being pushed over by hordes of them, which would happen to anyone taken by surprise in such an environment.

That really seems unlikely. We never saw any of them getting up either after all. I think from the footage it is clear that the were being taken out of the fight, either by death or KO.

[Junghalli]

Logically, should be the same. No reason why they shouldn't suddenly lose engine power.

I can think of one very good possible reason a craft's performance might be much more limited in air than in space. It's one thing to be able to travel at hundreds or thousands of km/s in vacuum, it's quite another to be able to slam into air at those same speeds for any prolonged length of time and survive.

Somebody with more relevant knowledge than me can try to calculate what kinds of atmospheric speeds a Tie fighter should logically be able to take and survive, but there's more to being able to travel really fast through an atmosphere than just engine power.

[Srelex]

That really seems unlikely. We never saw any of them getting up either after all. I think from the footage it is clear that the were being taken out of the fight, either by death or KO.

That's because the camera cut away most of the times it showed them being hit almost immediately, so we can't tell either way really. And even if they were being KO'ed, then even a modern soldier would suffer similar punishment if hit with a massive rock against his head, with a helmet even.

As for TIE engine speed in atmosphere...okay, I'll concede atmospheric hampering, but surely that doesn't mean that their space performance counts for nothing.

[Srelex]

This has nothing to do with their ability to dodge guided missiles, especially not in an atmosphere.

Like in the last thread I shitted up, I'll point out that they never moved very quickly in actual combat, and depending on human control means they never will.

It means that they have the capability to evade missiles simply by going into orbit. Or are you going to argue against their capability of flying into space?

Yes, they were. If you watch the movie, you'll notice the good guys - a handful of rebel infantry and the stone age army - won.

Also, it doesn't matter of Chewbacca did it or if one of the bears did it. The fact is that it was done with stone age technology. Rocks and logs.

Yes, and given that this was a small bunch of garrison troops against very large numerical superiority, no shit.

What side are you on? Even if the Celtic warriors win, that's the analogy of the situation. A hundred thousand stormtroopers vs ten million Earth soldiers.

Fair enough.

Besides, even if you assume there's no limits to their armor, you don't need to fight their armor. Bomb the area around them, putting craters in their path. They can't walk over it, mission accomplished.

That's something I put forward earlier.

[The Vortex Empire]

Not to be rude but in space you can continually accelerate where as on Earth you have to deal with air resistance, gravity, and friction. Tie fighters are going to be far more limited in an atmosphere then in outer space, the only question is how much that is.

In the Rogue Squadron books it's made quite clear that TIE fighters suffer quite heavily in atmosphere, as they aren't aerodynamic in the least. X-Wings and the like are far better off.

[Mobius IO]

That's because the camera cut away most of the times it showed them being hit almost immediately, so we can't tell either way really. And even if they were being KO'ed, then even a modern soldier would suffer similar punishment if hit with a massive rock against his head, with a helmet even.

My point is there is a lot of evidence that stormtroopers are not massively more effective then modern soldiers. The fact that both a stormtrooper and a modern solider both get take out by the same rock is my argument.

So the 500,000 stormtroopers will be "worth" about 500,000 earth soldiers. Hardly enough to take over and hold a mid sized country (like say Iraq) much less the entire world.

[Srelex]

My point is there is a lot of evidence that stormtroopers are not massively more effective then modern soldiers. The fact that both a stormtrooper and a modern solider both get take out by the same rock is my argument.

So the 500,000 stormtroopers will be "worth" about 500,000 earth soldiers. Hardly enough to take over and hold a mid sized country (like say Iraq) much less the entire world.

True enough. Although it could depend on which stormtroopers in particular--e.g. the 501st.

[thegreatpl]

how do you know bullets wont just bounce off a stormtroopers armor? A rock at point blank range might easily knock them out, but there could be no way for our weapons to score an actual kill without peeling them out of the armor.

[Batman]

A stormtrooper
-is immune to biological, chemical or the secondary effects of a nuclear attacks,
-is pretty much immune to smallarms fire and possibly infantry-level explosives,
-has MASSIVELY better battlefield awareness thanks to ALL those nifty vision aids modern soldiers need to clip onto their helmet and usually limiting their field of vision something fiece built into his helmet,
-has hands-off radio communications,
-has firepower to take out APCs/IFVs in a Stirling-sized sidearm (snigger) and apparently considerably larger ammunition capacity than modern day infantry,
so yes I DO think they are rather more effective than modern day infantry. As for the rocks, let me introduce you to a concept called CoM. I don't care if you're helmet is made of adamantium. If I drop a rock that size on your head you're dead no matter what. Have fun trying to get humans throwing rocks that size.

Not that any of that helps them much when we get to the 'occupation' part of the scenario. Even an effectively invulnerable stormtrooper can't keep pacified an area he isn't IN.

[The Vortex Empire]

how do you know bullets wont just bounce off a stormtroopers armor? A rock at point blank range might easily knock them out, but there could be no way for our weapons to score an actual kill without peeling them out of the armor.

Even if they can't penetrate, they're not just going to bounce off. It'll be like getting hit while wearing a bulletproof vest, it's like getting punched in the chest really fucking hard. It WILL knock them on their ass and bruise them. And a .50 round to the helmet, even if it doesn't penetrate, has a solid chance of breaking their neck.

[thegreatpl]

how do you know bullets wont just bounce off a stormtroopers armor? A rock at point blank range might easily knock them out, but there could be no way for our weapons to score an actual kill without peeling them out of the armor.

Even if they can't penetrate, they're not just going to bounce off. It'll be like getting hit while wearing a bulletproof vest, it's like getting punched in the chest really fucking hard. It WILL knock them on their ass and bruise them. And a .50 round to the helmet, even if it doesn't penetrate, has a solid chance of breaking their neck.

Yeah, that was what I was thinking pretty much, but I could not find the exact words.

[Junghalli]

It means that they have the capability to evade missiles simply by going into orbit. Or are you going to argue against their capability of flying into space?

However, unless they can also shoot at stuff on the ground from orbit (or at least beyond the service ceiling of terrestrial fighters and the effective range of terrestrial AA weapons) this doesn't automatically confer invulnerability. Reaching orbit only necessarily requires the capacity to accelerate faster than 1 G, how fast can a typical fighter aircraft and air to air missile accelerate?

[Batman]

The difference being you NEED a head hit to incapacitate a stormtrooper (and personally I think .50 is overkill, a head hit from 7.62x51 will likely snap the trooper's neck). Body hits will at best knock them on their ass, and you're NOT going to get troopers who meed to be MEDEVACed due to nonfatal limb hits because stormtroopers are armoured all over. And at least SOME kinds of stormtrooper armour are REALLY good at this 'spreading out the impact' stuff, since not only did the ARMOUR survive being hit by a spear hard enough to throw the trooper several meters into a wall, but SO DID THE TROOPER.

[Batman]

It means that they have the capability to evade missiles simply by going into orbit. Or are you going to argue against their capability of flying into space?

However, unless they can also shoot at stuff on the ground from orbit (or at least beyond the service ceiling of terrestrial fighters and the effective range of terrestrial AA weapons) this doesn't automatically confer invulnerability. Reaching orbit only necessarily requires the capacity to accelerate faster than 1 G, how fast can a typical fighter aircraft and air to air missile accelerate?

You DO know we're talking about fighters which CANONICALLY have accelerations measured in thousands of gs, right? When most AAMs spend most of their flight time BALLISTIC because of the rocket motor having burned out?
Not that I see how any nonnuclear warhead could ever HURT a TIE unless it managed to detonate inside the cockpit.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Are we seriously going to argue air friction is going to tax the TIE's airframe when we saw them flying through both the Alderaan and Hoth Asteroid fields and only being damaged by impacts from items at least as massive as they were?

[Junghalli]

You DO know we're talking about fighters which CANONICALLY have accelerations measured in thousands of gs, right?

In atmosphere or in space? As I pointed out, there's a big difference between the two: travelling really fast in space is much less structurally demanding than travelling really fast in atmosphere.

I'm not saying anything about the canonical abilities of TIE fighters, which I know nothing about except what I've seen in the movies (which I haven't watched for a long time so it's quite possible I've forgotten stuff). I'm just pointing this fact out.

Are we seriously going to argue air friction is going to tax the TIE's airframe when we saw them flying through both the Alderaan and Hoth Asteroid fields and only being damaged by impacts from items at least as massive as they were?

Can we quantify this?

[Batman]

We're talking about vehicles that can go escape velocity in under a minute (high end) FROM A PLANETARY SURFACE. I think that beats anything any modern day AAM can do, yes

[Ritterin Sophia]

Also it should be noted that according to the RotS ICS the Eta-2 Actis has a maximum speed of 15,000km/h, in other words just over Mach 12. It is also unshielded.

According to most stats I can find the TIE/ln is rated at operating around 80% the speed of the Eta-2 Actis (given it's unaerodynamic shape that's not surprising), so 12,000km/h should be close or Mach ~9.7. Over twice the maximum speed of the fastest AAM, the AIM-54 Phoenix at Mach 4.

In short, whilst I think Star Wars would fail due to running out of resources, their aircraft are entirely untouchable to any of our technology.

[Shroom Man 777]

Guerilla warfare won't depend on conventional faceoffs. You can always hit the fighter when it's parked in a hangar or something. Though obviously, to scratch such Star Wars airplanes with cockpit glass that can withstand multi-megaton impacts, you may need to use Davy Crocketts or some tactical nukes to damage it. But even then, I think if you sneak up on a parked TIE and shoved a Davy Crockett in the cockpit and detonate it, considering Star Wars firepower and resilience, I think a Davy Crock might only just discolor the upholstery of the cockpit seats.

I wonder if saboteurs could fit a Tsar Bomba inside a TIE cockpit. But even at 50 megatons exploding inside the TIE, maintenance crews might just repair the damage done by replacing a cracked display screen or by wiping soot off the cockpit canopy.

This is an untenable strategy. The Earth resistance can't do this. I think the Mujahadeen will have to stick with throwing sticks and rocks at Stormtroopers.