Ground warfare

[Esquire]

Whence the basic skeleton, no doubt. But it's also an excellent gun platform for LOS weapons, well-armored and well-shielded, and with a significant troop and vehicle capacity regardless of awkward deployment options. That's all Simon, and now I are saying; it's not an objectively useless design. It may be a bad idea that some designers managed to partially salvage, but it's not completely without useful applications.

[Purple]

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.

[Don't quote pics or videos please ~ NL]

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.

That presumes Palpatine being a complete idiot. If the vehicles were as bad as you claim than they would have led to battle after battle being lost. And that would have eventually lead to Palpy taking notice.

[NecronLord]

Palpatine was dead by the time the Empire encountered a parity threat.

When the empire encountered a parity threat, it was soundly defeated.

[NecronLord]

Whence the basic skeleton, no doubt. But it's also an excellent gun platform for LOS weapons, well-armored and well-shielded, and with a significant troop and vehicle capacity regardless of awkward deployment options. That's all Simon, and now I are saying; it's not an objectively useless design. It may be a bad idea that some designers managed to partially salvage, but it's not completely without useful applications.

And it does not one thing a more sensible vehicle couldn't do better and with less moving parts.

I should specify, I like AT-ATs, I had the old toy one the size of a dog as a kid and I still have it in the loft to this day, I think General Veers was great (easily my favourite incidental character in ESB) and that they look awesome. I've even said I won't be taking up FFG's miniatures games until they do a smaller scale ground one so it can have AT-ATs.

But there's no defending mechas on practicality grounds.

[Micro-Balrog]

To illustrate

During the 1930s, a star rose in the Soviet arms production system.

His name was Kurchevsky.



He believed that in the future, all Soviet artillery and guns would be replaced with recoilless guns. Recoilless guns of his own invention.

Tuhachevsky, the Marshal, inventor of Deep Battle, believed in this too... and soon, Kurchevsky had vast resources of his disposal, and control of several production plants' output.

He arranged to have competing recoilless-gun inventors fired and sent to the Gulags.

Certain of his success, Kurchevsky began to develop various weapons - giant 305mm guns for destroyers, 152mm guns for staff cars (you can see him with his own staff car in that photo)... really big guns.

His favored project was recoilless guns for aviation. He helped develop several fighter planes which were armed with 35mm, 65mm, even 75mm guns - enormous guns, really. Because the guns were recoilless, Kurchevsky believed that he could field guns of essentially unlimited size of any aircraft. Five of the Kurchevsky planes were confirmed and made in various quantities, from 1 to several dozen planes.

There was one small problem.

Kurchevsky automatic cannon didn't work.

This brilliant hero of the revolution - again, at this point this man was holding up all regular, non-recoilless artillery production as he intended to replace regular howitzers with variou recoilless guns - developed a muzzle-loading automatic cannon. That is:

Kurchevsky automatic recoilless guns used a compressed air feed to push a cloth cartridge (that is, a unitary cartridge using a shell and a clothh 'casing') forward down a tube going down the length of an aviation cannon, and then back down the muzzle.

You might think this is insane - but the Soviet Union confirmed several Kurchevsky aircraft for production, and they actually flew. Even as it turned out the guns did not eliminate recoil enough - the vibration of Kurchevsky guns firing literally caused the aircraft to start slowly falling apart in mid-air.

Kurchevsky continued experimenting, throwing away money and air frames, holding up factories... until, entirely without relation to this incident, his friend Tuhachevsky got executed. Then, of course, Kurchevsky and several of his fellow 'researchers' were also shot.

The Red Army Purges were now on their way.

The Soviet Army lost 133% of its Army Commanders and 112% of its Corps Commanders. 65% of RKKA senior staff were lost.

[Micro-Balrog]

P.S. During the building of the so-called Stalin Line, several of the artillery bunkers were unable to be fitted with artillery because the NKVD officers responsible for planning the Line planned the concrete bunkers with firing slits too narrow to accommodate the guns that were meant to be mounted in them.

[Sea Skimmer]

But even the strength of the defenders might have dissuaded the empire from trying to bring say, Imperial Troop Transports, or AT-OTs that could have otherwise shortened the battle.

That seems doubtful considering that the AT-AT is the stock and trade of Imperial ground forces and the AT-OT is one of the few vehicles clearly even stupider in design around. A couple of the fixed guns could fend off the AT-STs, which seem to be the only real issue at hand.

Of course, there's many defects in the rebel defences compared to what they could be (uncovered trenches, etc) but it seems reasonable to imagine that the empire was being cautious by sending in only the most heavily armoured units.

Or that they just really don't carry around anything but the heaviest armored vehicles and some light scout stuff, for the same general reasons why most armies gave up light and medium tanks in real life in favor of a single type of main battle tank. Such intermediate vehicles only become cannon fodder in too many situations, so you don't even bother with them.

Any wheeled or tracked vehicles they might have had meanwhile may simply not have been suitable for use in deep snow. Deep snow will stop almost anything of a reasonable size, while the shear mass of the AT-AT would probably render the problem moot as any snow deep enough to stop it would have already compacted into ice.

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.

And a couple stay behind guys manning the gun turrets as I mentioned would have accomplished that fine.

This brilliant hero of the revolution - again, at this point this man was holding up all regular, non-recoilless artillery production as he intended to replace regular howitzers with variou recoilless guns - developed a muzzle-loading automatic cannon.

Still not a win-match for the Hungarian muzzle loading tank destroyer vehicle.

[Batman]

133% of its Army Commanders and 112% Corps Commanders, huh. That's pretty impressive.

[NecronLord]

Well going from the preponderance of evidence since the great Disney canon purge, the Imperial Troop Transport (which is only really a strange vehicle in that it has boxes for prisoners on the side) is probably far more common than the AT-AT, but the point about compacting snow is a good one.

Of course, the Imperial Troop Transport might not have been able to get through the shield as it's a skimmer.

[NecronLord]

133% of its Army Commanders and 112% Corps Commanders, huh. That's pretty impressive.

They got to a point of promoting new guys only to then purge them later, yes. There were obviously some survivors though, but they actually killed more commanding generals than they had at the start.

Much like the jokes about Death Squadron being the fast-track to command rank, except horrifyingly real.

People thinking that extremist, unaccountable political pressures couldn't fiesably bring a mecha into existence are operating from a perspective that the Evil Galactic Empire was sane on some level. I'm not really convinced of that given how casually Rebels handles senior officers executing their juniors.

Let's remember that the thing about stormtrooper helmets being difficult to see out of is now actually televised canon too, as is the notion that stormtroopers are bad shots, as much as we may hate it. Certainly the owners of the franchise are now pushing the perspective that imperial ground equipment is shit.

[Sea Skimmer]

Well going from the preponderance of evidence since the great Disney canon purge, the Imperial Troop Transport (which is only really a strange vehicle in that it has boxes for prisoners on the side) is probably far more common than the AT-AT, but the point about compacting snow is a good one.

Of course, the Imperial Troop Transport might not have been able to get through the shield as it's a skimmer.

Logically it could not, or none of this makes a lick of sense anyway. Certainly it would certainly be no reason for the rebels to be out in the snow fields waging a futile defense; clustering them around the transports to embark quickly would actually be the best place for them given an air threat.

Though I'd also point out that it appeared the rebels may have been building those field defenses in real time, possibly in-between the time the Imperials appeared and the battle began, as unknown hours may have elapsed. They may have begun the battle close to the base, since apparently nighttime is dangerously cold, and then moved out to meet the Imperial advance. But either way, a futile defense from the worst possible position was what they did.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

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.

The actual Sep design has only political objections which prevent it from being fielded(it was an enemy design and an alien one too). Of course, there's nothing stopping Kuat, SoroSuub, etc. from building a similar vehicle from a different design.

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.

Even if Necron Lord implied that the AT-AT was inferior in all ways, that statement doesn't logically follow. Look how long the US Army retained the M551 Sheridan in its inventory, even after its deployment in Vietnam was...far less than successful. Look how long the USN kept the Belknaps in commission after the infamous fire aboard the Belknap.

Military procurement and retention is governed by partially by practicality, yes. But, that's usually not the first or second motivation in the defense industry, not compared with politics and profit.

And, my understanding is the Empire didn't resume production of the Juggernaut; they continued it, to fill a need for heavy combat vehicles/battle taxis that couldn't be satisified by building on one vehicle alone.

That being said, I don't think Necron Lord was saying the AT-AT was inferior in all ways, just hugely impractical; as a combat vehicle and a troop transporter, it was adequate enough, but needlessly overcomplicated, with an over-tall, oversized walker design birthed from the Imperial establishment's specification that the platform inspire fear and terror, as well as be an adequate AFV.

[Elheru Aran]

The Empire ultimately was an oligarchy with the Emperor and the Moffs/Admiralty at the very top of it; current canon appears to be attempting to give the civilian leadership a little more punch (I've been noticing Mas Amedda a lot more, for example), but similarities to the Soviet Union, especially Stalin's regime, are hard to miss.

In such a context, there will be practical weapons, and boy howdy a lot of 'em (AK-47s for example are easily comparable to the E-11). There will also be a certain percentage of 'awesome but impractical' stuff that the AT-AT's fall under. And then there's the stuff that's just WHY. Death Star II, for example, especially if you go with the absurd 900-km size. Their priority is military spending under the pretext of looming war and/or preserving peace. I would expect there to be a large number of public demonstrations of military hardware and such on a yearly basis in urban areas on auspicious dates and all that.

This also rationalizes to a certain extent all the variations on the Star Destroyer that you see in the EU (there's a rather impressive list on Curtis Saxton's site)-- with all the money being thrown at military production, they're trying out different designs right and left, expanding upon the old Clone Wars era triangular design with modifications suggested by wartime experience and new technological developments and what not. This military build-up also permits them to keep a percentage of the civilian population gainfully employed in constructing and assembling all this materiel, especially in the more populous systems (see Corellian Engineering Corporation, KDY, Sienar).

Galvatron's speculation that the Snowtroopers were only landed after the AT-AT's brought down the shield, alongside Vader, makes sense to me. Does it suggest anywhere, say in the novelization, that the AT-AT's were carrying the Snowtroopers?

[Eternal_Freedom]

I always imagined that the troopers came down with Vader, since Veers says "the shield will be down in moments, you may start your landing" which always implied to me "landing troops."

[Micro-Balrog]

They got to a point of promoting new guys only to then purge them later, yes. There were obviously some survivors though, but they actually killed more commanding generals than they had at the start.

This also includes retired guys. And guys they fired, and then shot.

Another perspective - if you don't like political bias in Psychology of Military Incompetence - is a book with a reverse kind of bias, The Western Way of War by Victor David Hanson. In it he argues that societies with a tendency to fairly debate military issues are better at appointing competent commanders than top-down dictatorships and absolute monarchies.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Death Star II, for example, especially if you go with the absurd 900-km size.

Bait for a Rebel trap. Palpatine gave them a threat(another planet-killing mobile fortress)that the Rebels had to honor. With the option to finish the DS II, scrap it or abandon it in place once the Rebels had been wiped out.

I always imagined that the troopers came down with Vader, since Veers says "the shield will be down in moments, you may start your landing" which always implied to me "landing troops."

Or more troop types than armor and mechanized infantry were involved in the operation.

[NecronLord]

Logically it could not, or none of this makes a lick of sense anyway. Certainly it would certainly be no reason for the rebels to be out in the snow fields waging a futile defense; clustering them around the transports to embark quickly would actually be the best place for them given an air threat.

Ah, the Imperial Troop Transport is the light IFV thing in Rebels here, are you thinking of the Imperial Patrol Transport, which is the LAAT cousin?

Though I'd also point out that it appeared the rebels may have been building those field defenses in real time, possibly in-between the time the Imperials appeared and the battle began, as unknown hours may have elapsed. They may have begun the battle close to the base, since apparently nighttime is dangerously cold, and then moved out to meet the Imperial advance. But either way, a futile defense from the worst possible position was what they did.

Good point about the trenches seeming to be recent.

As for position, how would you defend the base if you were expecting your guns to be able to damage some of the AT-ATs (as they seemed to be) and wanting to slow them as much as possible?

[Elheru Aran]

I always imagined that the troopers came down with Vader, since Veers says "the shield will be down in moments, you may start your landing" which always implied to me "landing troops."

Forgot that, so there you go.

Man, it really has been a long time since I saw ESB. I really wish they had the Star Wars movies on Netflix...

[Micro-Balrog]

The trenches would have to be recent.

Assuming there's not some really advanced trench-digging tech avaialable (not seen on-screen), trenches tend to deteriorate over time. (Even in frozen ground they could get filled in with snow and ice which would no doubt then become a solid mass). The general practice - back in the era where chains of concrete bunkers and trenches formed a major part of national defense, was to build things like concrete bunkers in peacetime, and then dig trenches as needed to support them as the actual fighting began. It's possible something like that happened here.

[Sea Skimmer]

I always imagined that the troopers came down with Vader, since Veers says "the shield will be down in moments, you may start your landing" which always implied to me "landing troops."

That was my assumption too. Now we do see rebels firing blasters in the direction of the walkers, which at times people here have interpreted to mean they were firing at Snowtroopers who disembarked. That might be true, but even if it was said battle was clearly not directly beside the rebel base, and humans on foot in the snow and ice are SLOW. So its very unlikely those guys would have had time to advance all the way to the base before Vader landed with more troops. Even if they were not being opposed at all how many kilometers are they going to jog?

Though randomly this is also a pretty plausible reason for walkers to be slow, if they were designed the same kind of way infantry tanks used to be, maximum protection but no requirement to be faster then foot mobile infantry. On the other hand the walkers might have been going very slow on purpose to be on the lookout for land mines. They should have all kinds of ground penetrating radar operated by droids to find such things, but that doesn't mean they can do so quickly. You really want that kind of sensor on a helicopter or similar platform (flying at low altitude in and of itself like speeders do is NOT a defense against advanced exist in real life types of mines).

The trenches would have to be recent.

Assuming there's not some really advanced trench-digging tech avaialable (not seen on-screen), trenches tend to deteriorate over time. (Even in frozen ground they could get filled in with snow and ice which would no doubt then become a solid mass). The general practice - back in the era where chains of concrete bunkers and trenches formed a major part of national defense, was to build things like concrete bunkers in peacetime, and then dig trenches as needed to support them as the actual fighting began. It's possible something like that happened here.

Probably a mix. Keeping trenches clear of snow wouldn't be a big deal since you could assign droids to do the work; Star Wars seems not to like combat droids thanks to the clone wars but a ditching droid would be 'safe'. On the other hand the gun power cables are laid on the surface, and nobody would do that given any real time to prepare. So the trenches may or may not have already existed, but the defense guns certainly were freshly installed. IIRC the old WEG stuff said those turrets directly hooked onto repulsorlift craft to be moved, more or less like real towed artillery but hovering.

[NecronLord]

I would expect there to be a large number of public demonstrations of military hardware and such on a yearly basis in urban areas on auspicious dates and all that.

This in fact forms the plot of a Rebels episode; blowing up a valuable fighter prototype that's being shown at a parade on Empire Day.

Galvatron's speculation that the Snowtroopers were only landed after the AT-AT's brought down the shield, alongside Vader, makes sense to me. Does it suggest anywhere, say in the novelization, that the AT-AT's were carrying the Snowtroopers?

They were carrying some of them in the film. A stormtrooper captain comes in from the rear section and Veers tells him to disembark his men - script at this moment:

INT. IMPERIAL SNOW WALKER - COCKPIT

General Veers studies various readouts on his control panel.

VEERS
All troops will debark for ground assault. Prepare to target the main generator.

Later:

VEERS
Yes, Lord Vader. I've reached the main power generator. The shield will be down in moments. You may start your landing.

I always interpreted this as Vader bringing down more troops, he could concievably be just landing on his own, but that seems unlikely. Certainly there were snowtroopers who disembarked the AT-ATs though.


And no, I'm not saying that AT-ATs are completely incapable of fighting, or completely worthless, they are obviously formidable. What I'm saying is that they make compromises in their design to achieve a psychological effect, and that a vehicle could be designed using the same technologies - along the lines of the Juggernaut - that would be a more generally effective vehicle.

[Esquire]

Whence the basic skeleton, no doubt. But it's also an excellent gun platform for LOS weapons, well-armored and well-shielded, and with a significant troop and vehicle capacity regardless of awkward deployment options. That's all Simon, and now I are saying; it's not an objectively useless design. It may be a bad idea that some designers managed to partially salvage, but it's not completely without useful applications.

And it does not one thing a more sensible vehicle couldn't do better and with less moving parts.

I should specify, I like AT-ATs, I had the old toy one the size of a dog as a kid and I still have it in the loft to this day, I think General Veers was great (easily my favourite incidental character in ESB) and that they look awesome. I've even said I won't be taking up FFG's miniatures games until they do a smaller scale ground one so it can have AT-ATs.

But there's no defending mechas on practicality grounds.

We're in agreement, then. They're an objectively bad design, just not a totally useless one.

[Lord Revan]

In general that's what dictatorship "superweapons" tend to be not totally pointless but pretty much always impractical or just inefficient to the task.

Lets look at the Tiger tank for example as pointed out it had better armor and main gun then any other tank of the era, how ever due the design flaws its logistal cost was higher per tank then Germany could afford. Also as I stated the Soviet ending up in the balistic missile race with the US contributed to their fall since the Soviet Union didn't have the logistics to maintain such a race.


It's not impossible to assume that the Empire had loads of inefficient designs that worked "good enough" when faced with essentially inferior opponents (aka Rebel Alliance) but when the New Republic gain semi-parity with imperial troops and the Empire no longer had the benefit of having vastly stronger logistical reserves the wastefulness of the designs meant to impress this or that Moff ended up hurting the Empire and could easily be the reason for the political situation in TFA basically post Endor Empire had more resouces to work with but they wasted those resources on designs meant to impress the brass rather efficient battlefield designs, while the Rebels/Republic did the exact opposite.


Lets take another real life example, on paper the Soviets should have easily won the Winter War as they had signifigantly more resources but they used those resources poorly, with designs while impressive on paper were utterly impractical like the T-35 Heavy Tank (which probably was not used in the Winter War but similar designs were) and poor deployment of forces (largely due to the purges that were mentioned previously).

[Micro-Balrog]

I think 2-3 SMK prototypes were used in the war, which was another multiturreted tank.

On a more broad front, Soviet command was at first very inept at both the strategic and the tactical level, and their troops were not - initially - prepared to deal with the Finnish defensive system which was very skillfully built and manned with great tenacity.

[Lord Revan]

I think 2-3 SMK prototypes were used in the war, which was another multiturreted tank.

On a more broad front, Soviet command was at first very inept at both the strategic and the tactical level, and their troops were not - initially - prepared to deal with the Finnish defensive system which was very skillfully built and manned with great tenacity.

To be honest the exact model of the tanks used was irrelevant to my point that Soviets missused the resources they had and while you can argue who in the end won the war the soviets were unable to fulfill their strategic objectives (unless you want to belive that "projecting Leningrad" BS the Kremlin claimed was the objective).

Also the finnish defensive systems were not so well built at the time (as the Finnish Defense Force was in short supply about everything but enemies) however we were (collective "we" mind you as I was born in 1982) able to use what we had to greater effect, granted it helped that soviet plans misjudged the finnish character badly resulting in plans that were far too ambious about their rate of progress, so instead of the finnish "reds" flocking to fight under the soviet banner, the finnish people both "white" and "red" (aka both right and left wing) fought united with unexpected tenacity.

no points on guessing my nationality