Ground warfare

[Adam Reynolds]

One problem with the Rebel defense is that they didn't actually slow the walkers down at all. Did the AT-AT ever appear to walk any slower as a result of the fact that it was being fired upon?

[Simon_Jester]

Well, aside from occasionally standing still to shoot accurately at the snowspeeders, and having two or three AT-ATs be destroyed by the Rebels, no. Then again, it's pretty obvious from the Rebel reaction that they weren't counting on giant ultra-armored behemoths that would be literally immune to their heaviest weapons.

Hmmm... maybe they weren't planning on fighting AT-ATs, even though the EU claims they'd been around for a long time, because while the AT-AT was relatively old technology, the landers designed to drop them on a planet quickly were new? If so, the Rebels might figure the Empire would have to land, secure a drop zone, and send in freighters and unload the AT-ATs laboriously, in which case landing them would take a lot more time, and the Rebels could still usefully buy time with defenses against lighter vehicles? I mean, maybe the Rebel cannon would have been effective against Imperial vehicles built on the same scale as a modern battle tank, and maybe those are the heaviest vehicles the Rebels expected the Empire to be able to deploy in a hurry.

There were scout walkers on Hoth as well (one is seen briefly in the Special Edition versions), so that makes sense. It does mean that AT-AT's aren't quite capable of operating as APC's solely on their own though, but then nobody sends an APC on its own without support, do they?

One wonders why Vader's forces didn't bother to use speeder bikes, if they had the capability for it. Perhaps it was a case of simply not caring-- they knew well enough where the enemy forces were deployed and had a decent idea of where their target was, all they had to do was get there, shoot the shield generator, and land troops to take the base.

Speeder bikes (and small speeder vehicles) are at best a way to get infantry and light armor into combat with the enemy quickly. The problem with that is that the infantry and light armor are things the Rebel entrenchments can chew up. The Imperial strategy (which appears not to have factored in the ion cannon) was pretty clearly to rely on heavier armor to shatter the Rebel lines without loss among the ground forces.

Juggernauts:

Juggs have missiles. They far out-range the AT-AT, having a range of 30Km (RotS ICS) which is beyond the line-of-sight range from the top of an AT-AT on an earthlike planet, even on flat terrain - no, being tall doesn't do anything except expose the AT-AT to enemy fire and maybe provide some protection against landmines.

Exactly what argument are we going to deploy, then, for why long range surface to surface missiles were not used on Hoth? It's not hard to explain why the missiles weren't fired from outside the shield (no reason to assume a missile can fly through the Rebel shield). But why not bring missile-capable vehicles inside the shield perimeter?

It seems unreasonable to suppose that the Empire simply forgot it had ever had the capability of long range missiles. If they were not used, there would presumably be a reason. In general Star Wars combat is if anything less missile-centric than real life. Perhaps proliferation of jammers or small, automated point defense systems makes a small fragile missile an unreliable way to do harm to the enemy, and that small unarmored/unshielded aerial craft are too vulnerable to being targeted and shot down?

We already remark on how much Phalanx missile defense turrets look like R2-D2 in real life.

The Jugg is also double the AT-AT's length (standard model, at least, maybe not the Rebels one?) and presumably able to carry heavier armour.

Presumably, but have we ever seen a Juggernaut survive hits that would have destroyed an AT-AT?

As with all mechas, AT-ATs can only really be explained by political/religious factors. Going by EU media, lots of war machines from different cultures are built with scariness over effectiveness in their design (B1 battle-droids are designed to look scary by Geonosians, the droid Tri-fighters and HMP gunships by Collicoids, at least) and presumably the big-dog design of the AT-AT is another one of these.

It's at least plausible that the detail design comes from a terror weapon, but it seems unlikely that the Empire would have gone from a highly effective superheavy tank to an ineffective one just to increase terror factor. There are a lot of ways to make a wheeled superheavy tank look scary, after all.

So I cannot help but believe that the Imperials at least seriously expected the AT-AT to be reasonably capable in some mission that makes sense (mobile command post and gun platform for fighting relatively poorly armed opposition incapable of reliably breaching its armor from long range being the most obvious one).

I always wondered why they didn't just launch a couple Y-Wings from the base and bomb the walkers from above their effective firing arc, (I didn't see any Imperial air support).

It is odd that the tripped walker was immediately susceptible to blaster fire from the snow speeders - I suppose the fall could have knocked out its shields.

I don't think we know how high above the ground the shield was. It may well be that if you fly the Y-wings high enough that the AT-AT guns can't elevate to hit them, they're going to be above the shield and incapable of engaging the AT-ATs. Also note that the flexible neck mount for the AT-AT does seem to give them some respectable off-axis targeting ability. They might not be able to hit a target one kilometer overhead and one kilometer 'downrange' along the ground, but they could definitely hit a target one kilometer overhead and five kilometers downrange. Flying high enough to be 'immune' entails more than just flying at a level above the AT-AT's back.

What would really be the point of trying to draw out the ground battle anyway? Seriously the real question is why they committed any ground forces at all past a couple of guys to man the expendable fixed guns, considering they appeared able to inflict almost zero delay on the Imperial Walkers anyway.

They might have been expecting the Empire to not deploy or not have very heavy armor capable of just trivially bulling through the defenses.

Alternatively, the ground defenses may have been there to stop fast-moving vehicles from getting to the shield generator quickly, which would make sense if the shield generator was out of line of sight from enemies at ground level. Not so useful, of course, otherwise.

Since Hyperdrive is a thing, while only a few Imperial ships were in the blockade when the battle commenced ungodly hoards more would be able to arrive within hours making an unbreakable blockade. The rebels needed to evacuate personal and absolutely key equipment as quickly as possible, and considering the hyperspace capable fighters are both vital for escorting transports, to stop Imperial fighters the ion cannot cannot hit, and for future operations sending them out to do the ground battle would just be unwise at best. They themselves are key equipment, while the Empire might as well have unlimited AT-ATs.

I like this train of reasoning. Now, it doesn't explain why the Rebels haven't, say, modified any snowspeeders for bombing runs, but since the snowspeeders are clearly a conversion job of some kind it may just be a matter of "we didn't get around to that."

[fractalsponge1]

Something to remember about A6 Juggernauts is that they can't actually deploy from ISDs. The Executor could field them, but it is possible that they were simply replaced in front line service by the time of Hoth.

[NecronLord]

Exactly what argument are we going to deploy, then, for why long range surface to surface missiles were not used on Hoth? It's not hard to explain why the missiles weren't fired from outside the shield (no reason to assume a missile can fly through the Rebel shield). But why not bring missile-capable vehicles inside the shield perimeter?

Whatever argument we use for why they're not standard on more vehicles; of course in this case Vader specifically wants to take Luke skywalker alive, and so using big cruise missiles like the multi-megatonne omnidirectional explosives from Clone Wars are probably not ideal; it may also be that the cost of missiles means they're not standard on such missions.

But that must be a wider question of why missiles aren't everywhere.

It seems unreasonable to suppose that the Empire simply forgot it had ever had the capability of long range missiles. If they were not used, there would presumably be a reason. In general Star Wars combat is if anything less missile-centric than real life. Perhaps proliferation of jammers or small, automated point defense systems makes a small fragile missile an unreliable way to do harm to the enemy, and that small unarmored/unshielded aerial craft are too vulnerable to being targeted and shot down?

We already remark on how much Phalanx missile defense turrets look like R2-D2 in real life.

The corollary to that is that the Juggernaut does have missiles, which it does use in combat and in EU sources it was described as a successful design. If the Empire is using less effective machines than it could for some reason, cost seems as probable as any others.

It's at least plausible that the detail design comes from a terror weapon, but it seems unlikely that the Empire would have gone from a highly effective superheavy tank to an ineffective one just to increase terror factor. There are a lot of ways to make a wheeled superheavy tank look scary, after all.

So I cannot help but believe that the Imperials at least seriously expected the AT-AT to be reasonably capable in some mission that makes sense (mobile command post and gun platform for fighting relatively poorly armed opposition incapable of reliably breaching its armor from long range being the most obvious one).

It's obviously, in-universe, effective; to a degree. I just think it's less effective than the A6 would be, and that procuring more walkers instead of more wheeled vehicles was a mistake. Mentally I attribute this to large bribes from the manufacturers of industrial construction droid legs.

Something to remember about A6 Juggernauts is that they can't actually deploy from ISDs. The Executor could field them, but it is possible that they were simply replaced in front line service by the time of Hoth.

Conceivable; also a problem that Dr Saxton points out with the AT-AT, the majority of bays on a Star Destroyer aren't equipped to handle them, as far as we've seen; I believe they attribute Y-85s from the Executor as deploying them in Into The Worlds of the Star Wars Trilogy and certainly this seems plausible, as General Veers is clearly on board Executor in the film, and it would be odd if he were not deployed on the same vessel his troops are in.

Of course newer canon has an odd way to deploy them of course, and clearly establishes that they can be deployed by Star Destroyers.

Ship apertures don't necessarily fit the craft they deploy though, hence Dr Saxton's somewhat humorous suggestion that the SPHA-T is assembled on the battlefield from prefabricated parts carried by Acclamators - as it simply can't fit up the ramp.

Of course, both the A5, and the newer Alliance Juggernauts in the Disney canon, are smaller, and the A5 at least has missile armament - the Alliance Juggernaut doesn't, but has guns that are much bigger than an AT-AT's going by apparent (eyeball) scale.

[Purple]

Why must the deficiency be in their combat performance and not other factors? Like maybe the AT-AT is just cheaper to procure or requires less maintenance or something.

[NecronLord]

Because both of those are literally impossible for a mecha. Mecha cannot - all factors being equal - be less complex to maintain than wheeled vehicles. This is why real life mechas are exceedingly rare and specialised, while you can almost certainly find a wheeled vehicle within twenty paces of where you are right now. I am just this second going to go and get in one.

It's not a matter of how the tech of the setting works, it's a simple geometry thing; a mecha simply has to have more moving parts than a comparable wheeled vehicle, more motors, more shock absorbers. Therefore it must be harder to maintain, unless extremely unlikely economic factors intervene.

[Eternal_Freedom]

A thought has just occurred to me. It is possible that the Imperials used walkers over faster wheeled vehicles because a) that's wht they had on hand and b) they didn't know what terrain they'd be fighting on when they left spacedock to start hunting the Rebels, so bringing what are litterally called "all terrain" vehicles makes sense.

Also, it is possible that the Imperials didn't care about speed, since they had their orbital bloackade to stop escaping ships, they just didn't count on the Rebels having a viable anti-ISD weapon to cover their withdrawal.

As for why the Rebel defences were less well-designed than they could have been, Echo Base's best defence was being, well, secret. They may have expected the shield/ion cannon combination to buy time to load all transports and launch them at once, they didn't expect to have to fight a battle ont he ground.

Finally, the Imperial plan itself gets shot to hell early on, because they emerge from hyperspace close enough for the Rebels to spot them. Perhaps the original plan was to race in landers before the shield gets raised, hence using AT-AT's is fine since they wouldn't need to move quickly to reach the generators.

[Simon_Jester]

The corollary to that is that the Juggernaut does have missiles, which it does use in combat and in EU sources it was described as a successful design. If the Empire is using less effective machines than it could for some reason, cost seems as probable as any others.

It may be that antimissile jamming or point defense technology improved sharply towards the end of the Clone Wars, so that a missile platform that was effective as of Episode III would be useless by the Rebellion era. It may be that the technology of vehicle mounted energy weapons improved sharply so that missiles became less necessary- although the evidence may well rule that possibility out. It may be that missile barrages were specifically effective against the droid armies for reasons that wouldn't apply against another opponent (say, because the droids are in constant communication and that creates a lot of signals traffic, so an antiradiation missile can home in on the transmissions of individual enemy machines).

It's at least plausible that the detail design comes from a terror weapon, but it seems unlikely that the Empire would have gone from a highly effective superheavy tank to an ineffective one just to increase terror factor. There are a lot of ways to make a wheeled superheavy tank look scary, after all.

So I cannot help but believe that the Imperials at least seriously expected the AT-AT to be reasonably capable in some mission that makes sense (mobile command post and gun platform for fighting relatively poorly armed opposition incapable of reliably breaching its armor from long range being the most obvious one).

It's obviously, in-universe, effective; to a degree. I just think it's less effective than the A6 would be, and that procuring more walkers instead of more wheeled vehicles was a mistake. Mentally I attribute this to large bribes from the manufacturers of industrial construction droid legs[/quote]. I'm quite sure that a wheeled or tracked tank would be more effective purely as an assault vehicle intended to survive short range combat.

But unless the AT-AT has some advantages the Juggernaut doesn't, other than deployability (which would just lead to a smaller Juggernaut)... why would it ever have been developed?

[Abacus]

Maybe it's been lost within the last three pages, but what exactly was this thread suppose to be about? A critique of ground warfare in Star Wars? In what aspect? Tactics? Weaponry? Vehicles? I'm seeing a lot of technical arguments, but not seeing how that correlates back to actual "ground warfare" except in a few, disparate cases.

So, I guess I'll supply a prompt: What battles or campaigns proved the Empire's capability to reign supreme on land as well as in space? How were these campaigns or battles executed? What tactics, at the tactical, operational, or strategic levels allowed them victory? What advantages did the Empire have over their adversaries?

[NecronLord]

Maybe it's been lost within the last three pages, but what exactly was this thread suppose to be about? A critique of ground warfare in Star Wars? In what aspect? Tactics? Weaponry? Vehicles? I'm seeing a lot of technical arguments, but not seeing how that correlates back to actual "ground warfare" except in a few, disparate cases.

So, I guess I'll supply a prompt: What battles or campaigns proved the Empire's capability to reign supreme on land as well as in space? How were these campaigns or battles executed? What tactics, at the tactical, operational, or strategic levels allowed them victory? What advantages did the Empire have over their adversaries?

Reminder: they lost. That's why Rey lives in a burnt out AT-AT and not a burnt out Alliance Juggernaut. The only parity foe the Empire ever beat, they beat because they had the off switch.

[Simon_Jester]

To be fair, it doesn't seem as though Palpatine was intentionally handicapping the CIS hard enough to cover for major deficits in their equipment or military tactics. So while their ground-based weapons might be drastically suboptimal, I can't imagine that they were that grossly inferior.

[Micro-Balrog]

The Galactic Empire had come to power through a coup and was run by a literal totalitarian religious madman.

Now history shows us - there is a classic, though a bit flawed, book, called The Psychology of Military Incompetence that shows that authoritarian personalities (and one can hardly imagine a greater example of an authoritarian personality than a crazed dictator who literally worships a religion revolving around quests for personal power and channeling one's anger into violent acts) tend towards military incompetence.

Now, obviously, this doesn't mean every single Imperial soldier would have been crap (the Third Reich had plenty of competent soldiers and commanders), but it means that there are flaws in Imperial military thinking. Imperial military doctrine over-stresses the value of intimidation through acts of terror, overly brutal acts of violence (we can see this in EU material, but there's plenty of it in any given Star Wars film), etc. And, eventually, they lose the war.

We do know that authoritarian states and their followers often tend to have a belief in weird things militarily - like the belief that increasing the brutality of your military actions inherently makes them more effective, that making your soldiers braver and tougher through propaganda and hardcore training makes them necessarily more effective (as Imperial Japan showed, it does not), etc. Now, it's fairly reasonable to assume that the Empire is intended to be less than 100% competent - not in a comical villain sort of way (though it is a series of Space Opera films!).

It isn't too far-fetched to think the guys who built the first Death Star would have imperfect military planning.

[Lord Revan]

There's definetly some truth to that, it was said by the brits during WW2 that Hitler was one the greatest military assets they had (yes the leader of the enemy nation was considered a military asset on their side) simply because Hitler wasted so much resources on bombastic displays of ego stroking that german war effort suffered badly for it.

To a degree the same can be said about the Soviet Union as their fall (and by extension the loss in the Cold War) was partly cause by trying to compete with US in a "my phalic symbol is bigger then yours" competions not realizing that the americans take their phalic symbols very seriously and have more resources to throw at them.

[NecronLord]

To be fair, it doesn't seem as though Palpatine was intentionally handicapping the CIS hard enough to cover for major deficits in their equipment or military tactics. So while their ground-based weapons might be drastically suboptimal, I can't imagine that they were that grossly inferior.

Actually in a couple of EU sources it was canonical that Palpatine sent Obi-Wan & Anakin to destroy "war winning" weapons the CIS were building, including the Cortosis battle droid. It's pretty clear he intended the CIS to lose; he would not as a self-interested tyrant want them to win, their stated ideology is anti-centrist, confederal, and low taxation.

To quote from Wiki:

C-B3 droids were first deployed in limited numbers on Tatooine, but were used more extensively in the attack on Coruscant and the defense of the Techno Union foundries on Metalorn.[1] Their deployment showed that they were extremely effective—too effective, in the eyes of Darth Sidious. Believing that they could tip the balance of the war, Darth Sidious, secretly Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, allowed information about the droids' location on Metalorn to reach the Jedi Order.

Likewise, Dooku hands over the plans for the Death Star to Palpatine immediately at the beginning of the war, and in the old-Canon, the Geonosians were actively constructing a version the Ultimate Weapon during the war before the off button was pushed. There's no reason to think they wouldn't eventually have finished the Great Weapon and used it to destroy say, Kamino and Kuat, and other Republic/Empire strongholds.

Even if not, their concept of war is inherently more sustainable than an army of clones.

Much is made of the 'Outer Rim Sieges' but even on the last day of the war the Seperatists were making assaults on key Republic worlds (Kashyyyk). There's no reason to think that the Republic/Empire could ever have won without the off switch, even if you wish to hold that the outcome was in doubt, they would certainly not have won so quickly or easily. At the very best, you can say that the Empire is not 'supreme' but 'contested one major war and lost the other.'

It may be that antimissile jamming or point defense technology improved sharply towards the end of the Clone Wars, so that a missile platform that was effective as of Episode III would be useless by the Rebellion era.

You mean in the intervening years, not at the end of the Clone Wars, we saw the last day of the Clone Wars, and missiles were still effective on both sides.


Jamming preventing the use of missiles in this context is prima facie absurd - in a universe where buzz droids exist, a missile's guidance system could easily operate optically and distinguish AT-ATs from their environment; especially when they're firing, and they can even be heard audibly from miles away - and supreme point-defence weapons are not in evidence (and could surely also be used on human targets which they are not).

It may be that the technology of vehicle mounted energy weapons improved sharply so that missiles became less necessary- although the evidence may well rule that possibility out. It may be that missile barrages were specifically effective against the droid armies for reasons that wouldn't apply against another opponent (say, because the droids are in constant communication and that creates a lot of signals traffic, so an antiradiation missile can home in on the transmissions of individual enemy machines).

The droids also used missiles on the Republic, consider the wheel droid. and the below Super Tanks.

I'm quite sure that a wheeled or tracked tank would be more effective purely as an assault vehicle intended to survive short range combat.

But unless the AT-AT has some advantages the Juggernaut doesn't, other than deployability (which would just lead to a smaller Juggernaut)... why would it ever have been developed?

History is littered with strange notions; the Tiger Tank is popularly cited as a mistake, the Japanese banned guns for political reasons, European countries went to war and tried to limit the deaths of the best trained enemy soldiers for ransom, modern european countries ban the cluster bomb and anti-personnel mine. The advantage the AT-AT offered didn't need to be in terms of military effectiveness; it could easily be political.


And for a comparison, for what would be the ideal design for a super-heavy assault vehicle:



Interesting that the Super Tank looks almost exactly as I would suggest a more efficient AT-AT would look, right down to a lack of overcomplex legs, and is equipped with mortars that can engage targets without needing to have direct line of sight on them as its main weapon, isn't it? I actually can't see a flaw with the Super Tank, apart from possibly limited fields of fire, but the AT-AT has that too.

A further post on the canonical Alliance Juggernaut will follow.

[NecronLord]

Meet the AT-AT killer, a smaller, faster vehicle with big honking guns and the firepower to put one down, also called a Juggernaut.

It may surprise you gentle reader, it certainly surprised me, to discover that the Disney canon now includes Disney Interactive's pay-to-win Clash of Clans knockoff, but nonetheless, that's the canon rules. In Star Wars Commander, the Alliance to Restore the Republic - I'm not calling them the Rebels here, because by the time they're engaging in conventional large scale offensives and the Emperor is dead, they're not really 'Rebels' any more - fields a Juggernaut, pictured here, which is comparable in-game role to the AT-AT.

Now these things shouldn't really be canonical in any meaningful sense, nonetheless, we can see that the notion in 'canonical' sources is that the Alliance begins using Juggernauts at some point - the timing of this game is supposed to span the period of before Hoth through to Endor, I believe, and beyond. Certainly it features things like TIE Defenders (now canon again) that appeared later on in the setting.

The Alliance Juggernaut is one of the few original designs used by the Alliance most of their gear is old Clone Wars era equipment in this game, notably AT-TEs re-entered Alliance service at some point, as did seperatist AAT tanks, all of which are shown in republican red and white paint jobs, looking rather weird from their origins on both sides of the Clone Wars.

The Alliance juggernaut resembles a massively upscaled Syrker (or the French AMX-10RC) in its overall plan, boasting all-round firepower on a turret, and the ability to disable AT-ATs with its guns, as shown in the trailer animation:



The second trailer shows the Alliance Juggernaut to scale with the AT-AT.



It's much smaller, but mounts guns seemingly in the size of the chin guns of the AT-AT, and as shown above, can disable them by direct gunnery. Being a wheeled vehicle it essentially must be quicker, and obviously is more able to use terrain to defend itself.

Neither has an in-game transport capacity according to resources I can find, but given this thing has the firepower to harm an AT-AT, I imagine it lacks any troop capacity, given its much smaller volume.

The Alliance or New Republic also refitted and re-used the Hailfire droid from the Clone Wars (Republican Hailfire droid shown right - I like to imagine that they get a load of Republican ideology downloaded into their brains too, to radicalize them); that should put to bed the idea that the idea that missiles are not a viable battlefield weapon.

But again, the Empire lost - the first order rose from its ashes, yes, but first, it was metaphorically burned to ash. And these guys defeated it.

Appendix - Game Mechanics Game Mechanics aren't meaningfully canonical, but for what it's worth, the Alliance Juggernaut has, before upgrades, almost a tbird again as much firepower as an AT-AT, with 90% the resilience of the AT-AT.

[Galvatron]

Likewise, Dooku hands over the plans for the Death Star to Palpatine immediately at the beginning of the war, and in the old-Canon, the Geonosians were actively constructing a version the Ultimate Weapon during the war before the off button was pushed.

Actually, that's still canon.

[Simon_Jester]

To be fair, it doesn't seem as though Palpatine was intentionally handicapping the CIS hard enough to cover for major deficits in their equipment or military tactics. So while their ground-based weapons might be drastically suboptimal, I can't imagine that they were that grossly inferior.

Actually in a couple of EU sources it was canonical that Palpatine sent Obi-Wan & Anakin to destroy "war winning" weapons the CIS were building, including the Cortosis battle droid. It's pretty clear he intended the CIS to lose; he would not as a self-interested tyrant want them to win, their stated ideology is anti-centrist, confederal, and low taxation...

Likewise, Dooku hands over the plans for the Death Star to Palpatine immediately at the beginning of the war, and in the old-Canon, the Geonosians were actively constructing a version the Ultimate Weapon during the war before the off button was pushed. There's no reason to think they wouldn't eventually have finished the Great Weapon and used it to destroy say, Kamino and Kuat, and other Republic/Empire strongholds.

Question, then.

Would you say that Palpatine did not at any point undermine the Republic war effort by covertly aiding the Separatists? I'm not saying he did that, since you obviously know more about the EU content than me. I'm asking you, would you say that he didn't?

It may be that antimissile jamming or point defense technology improved sharply towards the end of the Clone Wars, so that a missile platform that was effective as of Episode III would be useless by the Rebellion era.

You mean in the intervening years, not at the end of the Clone Wars, we saw the last day of the Clone Wars, and missiles were still effective on both sides.

Piston-engine fighters were still effective in 1945, but were becoming obsolete by 1950 and were thoroughly obsolete by 1960, due to the advent of jet aircraft- which already existed in 1945.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the weapons actually deployed to fight the Clone Wars were countered by developments during the Clone Wars, which simply did not see mass production until after the Clone Wars.

Jamming preventing the use of missiles in this context is prima facie absurd - in a universe where buzz droids exist, a missile's guidance system could easily operate optically and distinguish AT-ATs from their environment.

Substitute "jamming" for "optical blinding lasers" if the missiles rely on visual guidance.

The exact speculative nature by which soft-SF technology might counter missiles that use a totally unspecified guidance system really does not matter. The point here is that this is a good explanation for why missiles don't make more appearances in the Rebellion era- if antimissile defense has improved sharply. At some point, it honestly makes more sense to bring a heavy energy weapon into direct fire range, rather than expending swarms of missiles that may or may not ever get close to the target.

This isn't the only explanation for the lack of missiles. But if you are going to point out that the Empire does not use missiles, then some explanation would seem to be required. Perhaps they haven't abandoned missiles purely because of being too stupid to realize that Juggernauts with thirty kilometer missile range are a better choice for an armored attack than AT-ATs that can only engage out to fifteen kilometers or so (assuming level ground).

It may be that the technology of vehicle mounted energy weapons improved sharply so that missiles became less necessary- although the evidence may well rule that possibility out. It may be that missile barrages were specifically effective against the droid armies for reasons that wouldn't apply against another opponent (say, because the droids are in constant communication and that creates a lot of signals traffic, so an antiradiation missile can home in on the transmissions of individual enemy machines).

The droids also used missiles on the Republic, consider the wheel droid. and the below Super Tanks.

The droid armies did indeed use missiles- or rather, some of the component factions that made up the CIS used them. Since the CIS army is made up of several different factions that used radically different equipment, logistics, design philosophy, and tactical doctrine, this is unsurprising.

Does it mean the missile droids were effective compared to droids armed with heavy blaster artillery? Maybe, maybe not. The on-screen evidence doesn't really decide it, though perhaps an exhaustive viewing of the Clone Wars TV show would clear things up.

Even given that the New Republic later goes missile-heavy, this doesn't automatically ensure that missiles are as superior as one might think given their great range. Is it reliably possible in Star Wars to fire missiles at targets over the horizon and actually hit anything? We know that in space combat this presents problems- nobody tried to lob proton torpedoes in the general direction of the Death Star and rely on their internal guidance computers to find the exhaust port.

I suppose my main objection here is that we can't assume that the Juggernaut has an advantage in effective range because of its' missiles nominal range according to an isolated number in a single sourcebook. Especially not if this leads us to the rather silly conclusion that the Empire's signature choice of armored fighting vehicle was inherently so inferior in all ways that it beggars the imagination who thought it was a good idea to buy the things.

I'm quite sure that a wheeled or tracked tank would be more effective purely as an assault vehicle intended to survive short range combat.

But unless the AT-AT has some advantages the Juggernaut doesn't, other than deployability (which would just lead to a smaller Juggernaut)... why would it ever have been developed?

History is littered with strange notions; the Tiger Tank is popularly cited as a mistake, the Japanese banned guns for political reasons, European countries went to war and tried to limit the deaths of the best trained enemy soldiers for ransom, modern european countries ban the cluster bomb and anti-personnel mine. The advantage the AT-AT offered didn't need to be in terms of military effectiveness; it could easily be political.

This is conceivable, but the political context behind such things usually makes sense.

The Tiger Tank is a mistake in some sense but only because it was too expensive, not because it was a grossly inferior weapons platform. It did something useful that lighter tanks could not- not worth the price but at least a plausible decision.

The Japanese banned guns because guns were tools of mass warfare in their society, and the dynasty of shoguns which had just got done winning a round of civil wars had no interest in allowing mass warfare to continue.

And modern bans on cluster bombs and antipersonnel mines came about in the context of a society that cares more about being humane than about a slightly improved chance of winning a war.

What's the explanation for AT-ATs, if they are so grossly inferior to Juggernauts in every way? Bribery alone seems implausible given the sheer scale of AT-AT production.

[NecronLord]

Actually, that's still canon.

I had a quick flick through the book, and I couldn't see exactly where it said that construction had begun before the war, only that Geonosis was the original construction site.

I always liked Curtis' theory that the object at the end of RotS was the Great Weapon, and not the Death Star, though.

[NecronLord]

Question, then.

Would you say that Palpatine did not at any point undermine the Republic war effort by covertly aiding the Separatists? I'm not saying he did that, since you obviously know more about the EU content than me. I'm asking you, would you say that he didn't?

Not that I'm aware of, no. But then, there's not much information on Republic losses. I am hardly an encylcopedia though.

Piston-engine fighters were still effective in 1945, but were becoming obsolete by 1950 and were thoroughly obsolete by 1960, due to the advent of jet aircraft- which already existed in 1945.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the weapons actually deployed to fight the Clone Wars were countered by developments during the Clone Wars, which simply did not see mass production until after the Clone Wars.

Irrelevant, as Alliance Hailfires show that missiles remain viable.

Substitute "jamming" for "optical blinding lasers" if the missiles rely on visual guidance.

Those, too, can be used on human targets, indeed I recall some people complaining about the use of those on humans and wanting them banned. In any case, irrelevant, as Alliance Hailfires show that missiles remain viable.

The exact speculative nature by which soft-SF technology might counter missiles that use a totally unspecified guidance system really does not matter. The point here is that this is a good explanation for why missiles don't make more appearances in the Rebellion era- if antimissile defense has improved sharply. At some point, it honestly makes more sense to bring a heavy energy weapon into direct fire range, rather than expending swarms of missiles that may or may not ever get close to the target.

They do make appearances in the Rebellion era, happily.

This isn't the only explanation for the lack of missiles. But if you are going to point out that the Empire does not use missiles, then some explanation would seem to be required. Perhaps they haven't abandoned missiles purely because of being too stupid to realize that Juggernauts with thirty kilometer missile range are a better choice for an armored attack than AT-ATs that can only engage out to fifteen kilometers or so (assuming level ground).

There is no lack established of missiles even in the nu-canon, and the alliance used Hailfire droids in its campaigns that overthrew the Empire.

Even given that the New Republic later goes missile-heavy, this doesn't automatically ensure that missiles are as superior as one might think given their great range. Is it reliably possible in Star Wars to fire missiles at targets over the horizon and actually hit anything? We know that in space combat this presents problems- nobody tried to lob proton torpedoes in the general direction of the Death Star and rely on their internal guidance computers to find the exhaust port.

Yes, cruise missiles are shown in the Clone Wars, if you want to show that military tactics later disbar this, the onus is on you to provide affirmative evidence of such

As for attacking the death star, it's almost a literal no-limits fallacy to suggest saying that 'missiles are a competitive battlefield weapon' means that the rebel base should be protected by a sufficiently complex droid-missile capable of replicating the trench run. Obviously the rebels had no missile capable of exploiting the Achilles port; that in no way indicates that missiles are worthless and can't be equipped on ground vehicles.

The Tiger Tank is a mistake in some sense but only because it was too expensive, not because it was a grossly inferior weapons platform. It did something useful that lighter tanks could not- not worth the price but at least a plausible decision.

Actually, the Tiger was plagued by spontaneous fires in the crew compartment when it tried to travel cross-country as well as its cost issues and these sometimes even killed the crews. It was not only expensive, it was also not fit for deployment. Many of the tanks did not even make it to their first battle. References on this will be provided later if you wish.

My actually-serious theory is that they are an extension of the Tarkin Doctrine; they are very fearsome to subject populations, even if less effective than Juggernauts. Rule through fear of force, rather than force itself.

The AT-AT counts on fear, rather than being actually the optimal design.

[NecronLord]

Oh, the AT MP is also canon now too, as it appears in Star Wars Commander and Uprising.



So the Empire also uses a dedicated missile platform for ground combat. You can argue that they don't have longer range than beam weapons, but that is both prima facie questionable and contradicts the long range cruise missiles used by the Umbarans in the Clone Wars.

Compared to the twisting of logic required to make missiles impotent, the AT-AT being designed to induce fear over fighting a parity opponent is comparatively simple.

[Elheru Aran]

It would hardly be the last example of a totalitarian regime spending money on displays of power rather than efficient war-fighting materiel, after all. As such it would make sense that the Super Star Destroyers might carry such-- they would be a similar display in their own right.

That actually makes their deployment in Rogue One rather troublesome to rationalize, but we don't know enough about that movie yet to say much about it, so...

[NecronLord]

It would hardly be the last example of a totalitarian regime spending money on displays of power rather than efficient war-fighting materiel, after all. As such it would make sense that the Super Star Destroyers might carry such-- they would be a similar display in their own right.

That actually makes their deployment in Rogue One rather troublesome to rationalize, but we don't know enough about that movie yet to say much about it, so...

It actually amuses me that people are so keen that the Empire be perfectly professional at everything that it does, and that all its equipment be optimal, that they're willing to argue that anything that shows that they aren't has to be explained away, even if that involves never-seen CIWS weapons that have no visible operating systems and that don't smite the organic targets nearby because... free will? The starting point of Simon's argument seems to be that AT-ATs must be great, rather than looking at how they perform and determining based on that how good they are.

It's almost religious.

[Purple]

There is a huge gap between claiming something is great and only claiming that it's not so mind boggling stupid that it would be a laughing stock even in universe.

[Simon_Jester]

Aw man, now I have to agree with Purple again.

My starting point is that AT-ATs must be adequate for something if they remain in use over roughly a decade (from Rebels, which takes place before Yavin, up through Endor and beyond). If they're grossly inferior in all ways, in a setting where the Empire could relatively easily replace them just by resuming construction of an older vehicle... they wouldn't stay around. Or at the very least you'd see various ground force commands frantically trying to shuffle off the white-elephant AT-ATs while scrounging up older and more effective equipment.

So I will cheerfully concede that they have numerous design flaws... but they must be good for something, they must have been designed by someone who seriously intended them to work. Even if Tarkin just thought a big scary steel landmonster was all he needed, someone on the AT-AT project would have been trying to make a combat fighting vehicle capable of fulfilling some meaningful battlefield role.

It's like, if the Tiger tank had been so grossly inadequate that a Panzer IV was superior in every way, I doubt even the Nazis would have been dumb enough to keep building it. Let alone if a Panzer II or III was superior. As it was, the Tiger had numerous massive flaws, but it did have at least two things going for it: excellent armor protection by 1942-3 standards, and a very accurate, high-performance gun capable of penetrating enemy tanks at extreme range. If it hadn't been for the Tiger's ability to stand off and snipe Soviet tanks effectively, the Tiger would not merely have been a mistake, it would have been the sort of pure drooling idiocy that almost no one really exhibits during warfare. Its other flaws would have succeeded in dooming the project, because it would have had all these big disadvantages without offering anything in return that its proponents could seize on and say "aha, but the Tiger can do THIS!"

The AT-AT isn't an optimal design for an armored fighting vehicle, and it's not portrayed as anything like invincible (except for being nigh-immune to weapons fire from smaller vehicles). But it's not portrayed as a grossly inadequate and pathetic abortion of a design, it's portrayed as being able to at least hold its own even in combat against armored vehicles built to the same scale.

So I'm trying to explore possible explanations for how the AT-AT might not suck, since it is clearly not portrayed as sucking.

[NecronLord]

Even if Tarkin just thought a big scary steel landmonster was all he needed, someone on the AT-AT project would have been trying to make a combat fighting vehicle capable of fulfilling some meaningful battlefield role.

Why? Tarkin can have people he dislikes killed not even with a word, but with a nod - he has life and death power at a gesture.



No oversight. No court martial. No trial. No defence. No right to even know it's coming.

Would you tell him his ideas are wrong?

Unless you are literally suicidal, you will deliver his damn landmonster that inspires fear of force. As a designer your only concern is making Tarkin happy.

He is effectively a Roman Emperor, except in that he answers to another, higher Emperor. Sending his troops out to flog the sea in a campaign against Poseidon is entirely within the realm of plausibility.