Military Doctrines of the Clone Wars

[Metahive]

Some observations I made while watching the movies and the two series centering around that war:

1.Artillery is used very sparingly if it is used at all. Out of the battles portrayed, only on Muunilinst, Christophsis and the first battle of Geonosis is artillery featured prominently, but in the case of the latter, the artillery is curiosly direct fire only. Muunilinst is also so far the only battle I remember featuring CIS artillery, in the form of the "Big Bertha" style gun on top of the CIS command center (Hailfire Droids might serve in that capacity as well however)*. The question is now, since both sides have the habit of marching their troops in tight, open formations into battles, why isn't artillery used more often? The battle of Malastare demonstrates what potentially devastating effect it could have when just one bomb wipes out the entire attacking droid force, an effect I daresay several artillery batteries could have achieved as well, minus the EMP of that special bomb of course. The lack of artillery might be explained by the next point.

2.Easily available and mobile theater shielding. The skirmish on Maridun portrays portable theater shield generators that are incredibly small (when compared to the devices the Gungans used at least) of which two seem to be sufficient to block the firepower of at least a single droid company plus a single AAT and the firestorm of the special defoliator weapon. It might be that any large scale deployment of artillery might result in the enemy setting up such shields, reducing or nullifying its effect making it not worth the effort. On Christophsis for example the CIS sets up a massive theater shield as answer to the presence of republican artillery

3.Orbital bombardment or the lack thereof. I commented elsewhere that the series and movies are reluctant to portray capships firing upon planetary targets. Possible reasons are that capship mounted weapons possess too much firepower to be safely used on targets on a battlefield. I can't honestly tell if the series supports or refutes that notion, but the episode Cat and Mouse seems to establish that firepower can be dialed if Admiral Trench's line "reset forward cannons back to full charge" can be taken as such, so the safe use of orbital bombardment isn't out of the question.

4.Droid kamikaze. In the battle over Ryloth, several Vulture Droids are shown successfully utilizing ramming attacks against republican capital ships, resulting in a rout. On another occasion, in the battle of Tef (sp?) a Vulture Droid voluntarily crashes into the just opened and unshielded hangar of a Venator (very reminiscent of a certain oBSG episode BTW). At least in the case of the former it might be speculated that those Vultures have been specially equipped for this kind of mission since they attack the capships while their shields are still up. Then again, we also have Anakin himself use one of his Venators for a kamikaze with devastating results as well. That might mean Capships in a battle have only ray-shielding active, which is unlikely since various bombs, missiles and rockets are available for the warring forces. The battle over Christophsis however seems to support that notion since there shields to block missiles are portrayed as needing to be charged and set up specifically and are seperate from the shields used in space combat otherwise

5.Mechanized cavalry. Tanks and other such vehicles seem to be used in a rather WWI fashion, almost exclusively as fire support for the infantry. Tanks operating in a more "modern" (for Earth) fashion, as independent units utilized to for forward recon or to break through enemy lines and disrupt the rear of an army are almost non-existent. Only on Ryloth is a small CIS tank force portrayed and used in such a way so far. Reasons for this are for me not quite obvious. Tank-like vehicles like the AAT or its republican counterpart, the AT-TE also don't seem to possess much speed. The only ground vehicles, other than speeders, bikes and such, I recall to be quite speedy are the Hailfire and the Persuader Droid.

Those are some of my observations so far. Comments? Corrections? Anything is invited and appreciated.

*There are those self-propelling "proton guns" on the side of the CIS, which are shown on Ryloth and Geonosis, they seem to solely serve as AAA however.

[Metahive]

O yeah, and has anyone noticed that there's a certain similarity between this vehice:

AT-TE, six-legged walker with big gun mounted on top


and this one

Cybran Monkeylord, six legged walker with big gun mounted on top


The Monkeylord happens to be my favorite SC vehicle (and they recently re-introduced it in SC2). I wonder now if Chris Taylor was inspired by AOTC...

[Thanas]

Those are some of my observations so far. Comments? Corrections? Anything is invited and appreciated.

What you listed so far are not military doctrines, but weapons used. A military doctrine is something different, the "central idea of an army." It is not operation, tactics or strategy.

*There are those self-propelling "proton guns" on the side of the CIS, which are shown on Ryloth and Geonosis, they seem to solely serve as AAA however.

As we see in the episode, they however can be easily reconfigured for ground fire.

[Metahive]

Yeah, I thought about changing the title while I was writing that, but then forgot it. Maybe something like "Clone Wars Observations" or similar.

As we see in the episode, they however can be easily reconfigured for ground fire.

Well, direct fire for self defense anyway, just like certain AAAs on Earth. I was more talking about them not being used as artillery against ground targets far away.

EDIT: While we are at it, the episode that introduced those "proton" guns showed them taking out Acclamators in a few (or even just one) hits, yet when Obi Wan uses them against targets nearby later, their firepower is massively lower. Different shells for different purposes maybe?

[Thanas]

Yeah, I thought about changing the title while I was writing that, but then forgot it. Maybe something like "Clone Wars Observations" or similar.

As we see in the episode, they however can be easily reconfigured for ground fire.

Well, direct fire for self defense anyway, just like certain AAAs on Earth. I was more talking about them not being used as artillery against ground targets far away.

Who says they cannot do so? They got shells, which is enough for ballistic trajectories.

EDIT: While we are at it, the episode that introduced those "proton" guns showed them taking out Acclamators in a few (or even just one) hits, yet when Obi Wan uses them against targets nearby later, their firepower is massively lower. Different shells for different purposes maybe?

[/quote]

I would imagine so, given how they most likely switched to smaller shells for the anti-gunship fire and did not want to blow themselves up in the ground battle.

[Metahive]

Who says they cannot do so? They got shells, which is enough for ballistic trajectories.

Of course it's possible, it's only that we aren't shown them being used as such yet. Those proton guns are also present in the second battle of Geonosis, but there they're unfortunately taken out by EMP grenades before being able to fire a single shot. I would imagine that the CIS would have had an even easier time against the attacking Republicans if they had showered their landing zones with heavy artillery. I'm also curious why no CIS fleet was protecting Geonosis given the importance of the place espeically as they were constructing and deploying their new nigh-invulnerable "supertanks" there.

Do you think that will be adressed eventually?

[Vympel]

Then again, we also have Anakin himself use one of his Venators for a kamikaze with devastating results as well. That might mean Capships in a battle have only ray-shielding active, which is unlikely since various bombs, missiles and rockets are available for the warring forces. The battle over Christophsis however seems to support that notion since there shields to block missiles are portrayed as needing to be charged and set up specifically and are seperate from the shields used in space combat otherwise

Admiral Trench's Invincible was equipped with "thermal shields", a new type of shield we've not heard of before. They appear to offer a more complete defence against projectile attack (particularly, the stealth ship's anti-ship missiles) at the cost of having to be lowered to fire its own projectiles, as well as leaving a recharge time for when they can be raised again.

As for the effectiveness of kamikaze attacks, two points:-

* The Vulture Droids would have to have been somehow specially equipped for the ramming attack on the Venators (maybe laden with warheads or something). The kinetic energy alone of those impacts don't hold a candle to the asteroid we see slamming into the ISD's bow shields in TESB (during the scene where the ISD is vaporizing the asteroids in its path) - an impactor both faster and orders of magnitude more massive.

* Momentum is a bitch. I'm not surprised at all that a massive kilometre long vessel like a Venator could ram a Lucrehulk with catastrophic results - even if the shields could take the hit, the momentum transfer could still cause shield failure.

[Metahive]

Admiral Trench's Invincible was equipped with "thermal shields", a new type of shield we've not heard of before. They appear to offer a more complete defence against projectile attack (particularly, the stealth ship's anti-ship missiles) at the cost of having to be lowered to fire its own projectiles, as well as leaving a recharge time for when they can be raised again.

Ah, so there you have it. Do those shields also require to drain energy away from the guns when they charge? I always wondered why, when Trench saw Anakin's flying metal carrot heading towards him, he didn't order to take the ship under fire from his laser batteries.

As for the Vulture droids, I speculated they might have been specially prepared for this sort of attack since there's only one other occasion where they are shown doing this and there it's an attack of opportunity on a very vulnerable target. I can however not imagine them being loaded up with more warheads than their usual payload, they aren't all that spacious as opposed to the Hyeanas. Special shield-piercing frontal coating or something like that maybe?
EDIT: Considering the high speeds starfighters in SW can reach I think ram attacks by starfighters given enough space to accelerate could be very devastating by themselves, no?

[Adam Reynolds]

1.Artillery is used very sparingly if it is used at all. Out of the battles portrayed, only on Muunilinst, Christophsis and the first battle of Geonosis is artillery featured prominently, but in the case of the latter, the artillery is curiosly direct fire only. Muunilinst is also so far the only battle I remember featuring CIS artillery, in the form of the "Big Bertha" style gun on top of the CIS command center (Hailfire Droids might serve in that capacity as well however)*. The question is now, since both sides have the habit of marching their troops in tight, open formations into battles, why isn't artillery used more often? The battle of Malastare demonstrates what potentially devastating effect it could have when just one bomb wipes out the entire attacking droid force, an effect I daresay several artillery batteries could have achieved as well, minus the EMP of that special bomb of course. The lack of artillery might be explained by the next point.

Regarding the lack of artillery usage on Malastare, the Dugs seemed to be against using any direct weapons due to the volatility of the planet's gases. Artillery was also heavily used on Praesitlyn in Jedi Trial, although its usage here was slightly irritating. It was stated that air support was not possible due to enemy air defenses. However, given Star Wars tech, shouldn't those air defenses be able to engage artillery shells as well which we know they were using due to their explicit annoyance with the lack of sufficient numbers of indirect fire weapons.

3.Orbital bombardment or the lack thereof. I commented elsewhere that the series and movies are reluctant to portray capships firing upon planetary targets. Possible reasons are that capship mounted weapons possess too much firepower to be safely used on targets on a battlefield. I can't honestly tell if the series supports or refutes that notion, but the episode Cat and Mouse seems to establish that firepower can be dialed if Admiral Trench's line "reset forward cannons back to full charge" can be taken as such, so the safe use of orbital bombardment isn't out of the question.

We see in Dark Lord that the Republic was deliberately avoiding using orbital bombardment in an effort to avoid civilian casualties. Jedi Trial also featured something similar, with the CIS taking hostages to force the Republic to launch a conventional assault. We do see in other works that Grievous is not above using such attacks however. In paticular he was stated to launch a BDZ of Humbarine (ROTS:ICS). It was also stated that the Republic was able to use the capability starting with the Acclamator, there were also references to the use of orbital bombardment when capture was not a priority, however the Jedi always attempted to avoid civilian casualties.

5.Mechanized cavalry. Tanks and other such vehicles seem to be used in a rather WWI fashion, almost exclusively as fire support for the infantry. Tanks operating in a more "modern" (for Earth) fashion, as independent units utilized to for forward recon or to break through enemy lines and disrupt the rear of an army are almost non-existent. Only on Ryloth is a small CIS tank force portrayed and used in such a way so far. Reasons for this are for me not quite obvious. Tank-like vehicles like the AAT or its republican counterpart, the AT-TE also don't seem to possess much speed. The only ground vehicles, other than speeders, bikes and such, I recall to be quite speedy are the Hailfire and the Persuader Droid.

Here's something ironic, according to Wookiepedia, the official speeds of both Hailifire Droid(45 kph) and Persuader(50-100kph depending on source) are actually lower than the speed of an AT-TE(60 kph). However both sources come from the Clone Wars campaign guide which seems to have slightly minimalist numbers to it, while the AT-TE speed was listed in the AOTC:ICS. Regarding the use of conventional armor tactics, the cut materials from AOTC show that the droids did appear to use a somewhat conventional armored assault using the Persuader Droid Tanks.

[Metahive]

Regarding the lack of artillery usage on Malastare, the Dugs seemed to be against using any direct weapons due to the volatility of the planet's gases.

Ahh, but not only were the Dugs using some sort of catapult like weapon themselves, they also didn't object to the usage of the electro-proton bomb whose first effect is a massive explosion.

Now while there are sometimes reasons why the Republic can't use orbital bombardment like on Ryloth, there shouldn't have been anything against it on battles like second Geonosis, where they could have simply opted to bombard the droid factory after the shield was taken down. They also could have used orbital bombardment to clear the area around the landing zones which were outside the shield and featured fixed CIS encampments. The battleplan of the Republic on second Geonosis was pretty ill-conceived in my opinion, it's truly a miracle they managed to achieve a victory there.

[Srelex]

Didn't they handwave that with orbital support being needed elsewhere?

[Metahive]

Well, they said that they could only send a handful of bombers for CAS since there were other troops needing their support too. Orbital bombardment was not mentioned. It seems to simply not be an option in the Clone Wars series.

[Srelex]

Well, I suppose that if the developers have considered it, they'd feel that it may make the good guys seem too Empire-like by throwing down horrific bolts of energy from orbit. That, and the battles wouldn't be as interesting to watch. IU, though, the principle may be similar as to why the US didn't just cover the enemy with nukes in 'nam and Afghanistan. It would give the Separatists more ammunition for propaganda ('look at their violent and gratutious response to the justified uprising of our Geonosian brothers! Down with these murderers!' etc)

[Metahive]

Of course, but then why isn't the CIS using orbital bombardment either? They for sure shouldn't have any moral compunctions against it and their care for their image is minimal. Attempted. Genocide. On. Ryloth (no, I can't get over that).

For the latter point, three words, Geonosians on fire. I was pretty shocked by that imagery to be honest. I guess since Geonosians look and behave like insects they can die in a more visceral manner on primetime television. Did I mention I am an insect lover who deplores these sorts of double-standard? BTW, this extends to the droids too, many of which are shown to be quite self-aware and valuing their existence to the point of crying in fear when in lethal danger. *hack* *hack* *chop* *chop* Droid Shishkabop zomg rofl lightsaber rox!

[Srelex]

Of course, but then why isn't the CIS using orbital bombardment either? They for sure shouldn't have any moral compunctions against it and their care for their image is minimal. Attempted. Genocide. On. Ryloth (no, I can't get over that).

In the Ryloth case, the Republic had orbital supremecy IIRC, so all they had were the bombers. Other than that, I'm not sure where else in the series it would've been really necessary for them.

For the latter point, three words, Geonosians on fire. I was pretty shocked by that imagery to be honest. I guess since Geonosians look and behave like insects they can die in a more visceral manner on primetime television. Did I mention I am an insect lover who deplores these sorts of double-standard? BTW, this extends to the droids too, many of which are shown to be quite self-aware and valuing their existence to the point of crying in fear when in lethal danger. *hack* *hack* *chop* *chop* Droid Shishkabop zomg rofl lightsaber rox!

War crimes seem to be different in SW universe; in fairness, the effects of getting killed by a flamethrower aren't all that different than a high-powered blaster.

[Metahive]

A blaster drops you instantly (unless you're plot relevant in some way), getting burnt by a flamethrower takes longer. Different as night and day.
And again, I am not using Ryloth as an example where the CIS should have used OB, just as an example for their utter ruthlessness.

[Srelex]

Well, given their prevelance in the SW universe, it seems apparent that the denizens of the GFFA have a different moral view on their use. Anyway, even in other media like comics or novels for a slightly more mature audience the CIS doesn't always resort to death from above, so either they're more focused on actually seizing planets or also concerned about their image to an extent (we do know they use extensive propaganda).

[Metahive]

Propaganda is a complete non-issue in both series. It seems unless they're directly involved the denizens of the SW galaxy are utterly apathetic towards the war. It's also nice to see that planets like Malastare, despite having representation in the senate still need to be negotiated separately with to secure their support. I tell you, the Republic is a futuristic version of political earth constructs like the later period Holy Roman Empire or the Confederate States of America. It only stood for a thousand years because apparently nobody seriously tried to topple it before.

[Srelex]

Uh...propaganda is certainly present in many other media related to the Clone Wars. You can't expect a show aired on Cartoon Network to explore every facet of the conflict.

[Morningstar]

The question is now, since both sides have the habit of marching their troops in tight, open formations into battles, why isn't artillery used more often?

Essentially you've summed up the whole problem, albeit indirectly.

There is nothing in the films or TV series that is indicative of sound military tactics or designs.

They march in tight open formations in a way that even armies in the Napoleonic era would have found insane.

To be quite honest I could go on all day about the various ways that from a military and simply realistic perspective, the way the Star Wars universe functions makes no sense. Any kind of practicality or military realism is only ever seen in the EU, either in books or comics.

Particularly annoying, though I know it has no real bearing on a discussion mainly on land based battles, in the most recent Star Wars TV series Venator class capital ships and their CIS equivalents had an annoying habit of falling to pieces after a few shots from opposing ships or an attack by a handful of fighters.

[Metahive]

Uh...propaganda is certainly present in many other media related to the Clone Wars. You can't expect a show aired on Cartoon Network to explore every facet of the conflict.

Since they do show the occasional episodes that deal with the situation on the homefront, like Senate Murders and Senate Spy, I think expecting them to show how the war is "sold" to the populace isn't too far out. Also, these are observations about the movies and the two animated series, so what's portrayed in other media isn't really relevant here.

[Metahive]

There is nothing in the films or TV series that is indicative of sound military tactics or designs.

What the CIS considers to be a "Battle Formation". That's truly a sight I simply can't get over. Serves you right to get pseudo-nuked, ya' clumsy oafs! Victory parades are supposed to take place after the victory!

Particularly annoying, though I know it has no real bearing on a discussion mainly on land based battles, in the most recent Star Wars TV series Venator class capital ships and their CIS equivalents had an annoying habit of falling to pieces after a few shots from opposing ships or an attack by a handful of fighters.

That might simply be SW's defensive tech not quite matching up to its offensive tech. Fighters being an effective weapon was a specific design choice to emulate a certain feel to the battles just like the napoleonic formations, no matter how unfitting it would be for the sort of weapons used.
I guess targeting technology simply isn't that good in SW, but then again, you have tanks and catapults(!) shooting down starfighters with their main weapons so it's sorta' shizophrenic.

[Knife]

You guys are confusing the concept of modern day tactics and best possible for ever and ever. We're dealing with technology that is vastly different than modern day armies, and quite frankly modern day tactics and doctrine should not or would not apply except in specialized or general ways.

A giant robot army with shields, who cares if they march in a big block formation. Kill off a couple hundred still leaves you a reserve of quintillion. Lose a planet to stupid tactics, you still have thousands, tens of thousands of planets left. Hell, those same tactics could have picked you up a couple dozen while losing you one.

Here is where I think the Clone Wars have something right, in that you can have computer/droid perfection in tactics. Do everything right by the book, as it is explained and researched by the experts. Analyze correctly the situation and deploy your troops to the 'T', and still lose an engagement. You can win every battle, and still lose the war. That is something the movies and the cartoon do very well at. Obi-Wan and Anakin can win every single battle of the cartoons, and we all know the Jedi, the Republic, lose big fucking time at the end of it all.

[Vympel]

Keep in mind that in RotS this idea of marching in massive perfect formations never happened. Every battle is a general engagement with both the clones and the droids being infantry supported by armor in a manner which artillery wouldn't particularly devastate. The start of the battle on Kashyyyk is an exception, but then Wookies are not clones.

[Srelex]

Then again we've got Muunilinst, where both sides essentially just throw down everything they have and hope for the opposing side to fall over. Which, when you've got expendable troops, is actually not that unreasonable.