Rework the AT-TE

[KraytKing]

Make it make sense, if you can.

The turret sucks. It shouldn't have an exposed gunner who sits behind the axis of rotation. He's exposed to small arms fire and probably gets motion sick more easily, I imagine. The cockpit is brutally exposed, being encased in transparisteel and sticking out of the armored hull entirely, unprotected on three sides. There are four antipersonnel guns on the front and only two gunners. This is all terrible. Also the name sucks, what does "tactical enforcer" even mean?

But the six legs and squat stature work great, in my opinion. Six legs is more stable (easier to engineer) than four, so it makes sense that the Republic started there before developing the AT-AT. The scene on Teth from the Clone Wars movie was pretty bad ass, it's cool if they are super stable on mountains. Such would be a seemingly natural advantage of legs over wheels, possibly repulsors too depending on how you want to look at it.

The rather large capacity for infantry is interesting. Obviously there aren't any great parallels to modern tanks in that regard, unless we assume that the AT-TE isn't so much a tank as it is an IFV or even APC, except the Separatists were so bad at designing tanks that it stayed dominant. Or maybe infantry are so threatening to tanks that it needs a carried screening force? Not sure how much that makes sense.

So how would you adjust it? I can't really picture what my ideal version would look like. If you disagree with my list of pros and cons, I'd like to hear that too. And anyone else's thoughts on the tactical niche would be cool too. I've been reading some sources and watching plenty of youtube on mechanized combat, but youtube is generally pretty trash and I know there are some vets on here who might have interesting thoughts.

[Gandalf]

I'm not a vet or anything, but it could be a situation where the ATTE was initially designed for something like anti-riot policing.

Republic procurement decided that better to buy a ton of these off the shelf and throw them into warzones rather than wait for something more specialised, and clones are expendable anyway.

[RogueIce]

I'm not a vet or anything, but it could be a situation where the ATTE was initially designed for something like anti-riot policing.

Republic procurement decided that better to buy a ton of these off the shelf and throw them into warzones rather than wait for something more specialised, and clones are expendable anyway.

Sound theory and fits with "Tactical Enforcer" for a name. Could be they only had two of the guns (hence two gunners) or the guns were originally two varieties of less-lethal/crowd-control weapons, which could be operated by two gunners as they were different use cases between them. The "exposed turret" likewise might not even be original equipment - could be something for fixed emplacements which didn't need protection for the gunner from the rear as they'd only be exposed to the interior of their fortified position. Sure, "bolt on" turret seems implausible in real life but Star Wars has Ugly starfighters as a thing, so this is decidedly more plausible in that context.

As to fixing it, seemed to work fine enough on its own. Maybe come up with some kind of after-market armored protection for the top turret, but otherwise it seems fine. I don't think they had any issues with the gunners being too overworked that I saw?

As for "why carry troops" well the AT-AT serves this dual role as well, so I guess that's just a thing that the galactic military desires. The Empire was never shown to have any other kind of dedicated MBT, at least not in the movies (I know some of the RTS games did). The concept is not unheard of, as we see with the droid army tank, but for whatever reason both the Republic and later the Empire took this approach instead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[KraytKing]

The riot police theory makes a good bit of sense, but it does raise the question of why it was never replaced. That question can be answered pretty easily out of universe, of course, but supposing you are correct, what might the properly militarized replacement be? The AT-AT?

Really like the idea that the cannon was just bolted on from spares. Suppose the cannons were originally mounted as light defenses on Venators, making some sense of the use of AT-TEs ambushing the Separatist fleet in that one Clone Wars episode.

The cockpit is the big problem. The first time we see it in AOTC, one is disabled because the cockpit was easily destroyed. During the aforementioned assault on Teth, all three walkers are destroyed because a light cannon punched through the unarmored screen and killed the driver. The only one to survive the climb might owe its life to Ahsoka standing on it and deflecting away blaster bolts. Serious, serious weakness, and I can't really imagine what tactical benefit it might bring in return. Visibility is good, but the driver has no weapons control and Cross-Sections puts a dedicated spotter with a periscope behind him. If anyone would draw benefit from the field of view, it's the spotter. Plus, the tank widens substantially in the middle; high situational awareness is only going to help so much with driving when the driver can't even see his own vehicle. Right?

From a purely aesthetic standpoint, the cockpit positioning is good. It makes the front and back of the vehicle visually distinct, and adds a LOT of cool looking greeblies. Hard to sacrifice all that.

Trooper dismount probably has the same issues that BTRs have: small hatches. Cross-Sections makes it almost exactly the same, two side hatches and one on top. Star Wars troops don't have the same equipment needs as modern soldiers, however, so I guess that wipes out the big problems. Dismount will still be slow, but not too hard without packs, spare ammo, or antitank weapons.

I think the AT-AT carries troops simply because it can. The height, length, width, and engine power might all solely be designed for the main guns; adding berths for forty troopers didn't really stress the power generation and only took up what would have been dead space. It certainly wasn't designed as a troop carrier, canon and Legends came up with a bunch of different debarkation methods and they're all super awkward. So maybe the AT-TE was the same, and troops are carried because the space is available. Perhaps the seats are an optional feature, some tanks don't have them, and that's why we never seem to see troops dismounting on TV or in the movies.

[RogueIce]

The riot police theory makes a good bit of sense, but it does raise the question of why it was never replaced. That question can be answered pretty easily out of universe, of course, but supposing you are correct, what might the properly militarized replacement be? The AT-AT?

The Ep2 ICS gave us the All Terrain Heavy Enforcer which seems like it was a mid-way design between the AT-TE and AT-AT. Although we never actually see it in the shows, it apparently existed. So there's that.

The cockpit is the big problem. The first time we see it in AOTC, one is disabled because the cockpit was easily destroyed. During the aforementioned assault on Teth, all three walkers are destroyed because a light cannon punched through the unarmored screen and killed the driver. The only one to survive the climb might owe its life to Ahsoka standing on it and deflecting away blaster bolts. Serious, serious weakness, and I can't really imagine what tactical benefit it might bring in return. Visibility is good, but the driver has no weapons control and Cross-Sections puts a dedicated spotter with a periscope behind him. If anyone would draw benefit from the field of view, it's the spotter. Plus, the tank widens substantially in the middle; high situational awareness is only going to help so much with driving when the driver can't even see his own vehicle. Right?

Again, if we look at it as something that was originally used for police work or the like, the cockpit isn't a weak point. The transparisteel is probably more than good enough for hand blasters and similar small-scale projectile weapons, which is what it "should" be facing. And so the visibility helps because, well, you want to see where you're going in an urban environment.

Trooper dismount probably has the same issues that BTRs have: small hatches. Cross-Sections makes it almost exactly the same, two side hatches and one on top. Star Wars troops don't have the same equipment needs as modern soldiers, however, so I guess that wipes out the big problems. Dismount will still be slow, but not too hard without packs, spare ammo, or antitank weapons.

If all you're doing is discharging riot police, it's also not a big deal. But then as you mentioned later, we don't see them seem to carry troopers all that much, do we? The GAR seems to have chosen air mobility as a way to get them around in the heat of battle and then used vehicles like the AT-OT for more secure areas. So the troop capacity is a legacy feature rather than something the GAR put to use, apparently.

Overall, as a conversion from a (possibly) riot police platform to a combat vehicle, it does the job well but imperfectly. Considering this was for an army raised in secret, and the Kaminoans were cloners and not tank manufactures, it makes sense they made do with "off-the-shelf" solutions for a lot of things. Also, the decision to have the GAR be as air mobile as they are probably played a part: AT-TEs can be carried by LAAT/cs where heavier vehicles could not.

As for why they weren't replaced, well, wartime pressures probably. The GAR's ground equipment seemed to stay fairly static. While the Navy had some evolution with the introduction of the Venator-class and additional starfighter designs, it seems the major R&D did not go to the GAR beyond Phase II armor. "Better" systems like the aforementioned AT-HE may have existed, but were not in large enough numbers it seems to have seen common use on the battlefield.

[Lord Revan]

In regards to why the AT-TE wasn't replaced we got remember that the Republic had not had a true army since the fall of the Sith thousand years prior so what knowledge they had military tech was probably out of date or lost.

Also Palpatine was probably making sure that GAR wouldn't become too effective at fighting the CIS so any R&D was probably buried in layers of byrocratic bs that would make deployment of new designs in large numbers practically impossible only for that to instantly disappear when Palpatine became the Emperor and the Empire needed those new designs.

We got remember that the Republic goal wasn't really beat the CIS but rather extend the war so that the Republic citizens would accept the transformation into the Empire and destruction of the Jedi, even if this wasn't the goal told to public (or most of Republic HQ), though also CIS goals were to act as the bad guy to allow Palpatine to take over the Republic and transform it to the Empire and what ever goals they told the public was just a smokescreen.

I'm also certain that had Dooku betrayed Sidious and actually tried to win the Clone Wars for real (instead of just pretending to do so) Republic would have gain more effective wargear to counter this.

EDIT:the Design of ineffectiveness of the AT-TE as well as other tactical and strategic issues make sense when viewed thru the lens of true goals, as for why no one in the Republic spoke out, I'm pretty plenty of senators spoke out but Palpatine used the flaws of the Republic against itself and those voices were made ineffective by drowning any drive for improvement with debates over minor details.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Having the AT-TE being a repurposed police vehicle makes so much sense to me it's surprising I haven't heard the idea before.

As for why it never got replaced - you've got a galaxy-wide war, with tens of millions of units, all of whom need gear now. And the AT-TE works well enough, and if it is a repurposed police vehicle can probably be produced on a lot of worlds, that can churn out the "mil-spec" version with minimal adjustment, certainly less re-tooling than an entire new vehicle design. And the war only lasts three years - by the time you're done designing a new vehicle, field-testing it and getting it into mass production the conflict may be over.

There probably were all sorts of programs, and maybe some newer models like the AT-HE did make it into production, but the war is on a vast scale and we only see a comparatively small slice of it in the films and animated series.

[KraytKing]

As always, logistics is the answer. Thanks for the reminder, Eternal_Freedom.

I guess my problem with the "riot police" explanation is that it's back to not making much sense. This is the norm for Star Wars vehicles, but it was nice for it to briefly be different. Why does a riot vehicle have legs? The stability and adaptability aren't needed on nice, paved city streets, which is where riots happen. It's also perpetually close to base, so if we suppose that repulsorlifts need wildly more fuel and maintenance, you would have it. To me, AT-TEs make real sense as long-range mountain mechanized infantry, but if that isn't what they're designed for, then why do they look like that?

I really dislike the AT-HE. Again with the "Enforcer" name, the two-legged version is gross looking, and they have the problem a lot of prequels stuff has: it looks more effective than the more modern Imperial stuff. The AT-HE has bigger guns than the AT-AT, don't like that one bit.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I have to wonder if the AT-TE might be the SW equivalent to the WW2 British Sten gun - it's ok, and can be produced widely and easily. Is it great? Nope. But better to have a million "ok" guns now than five thousand great guns too late.

As for the walker design, well someone mentioned earlier that the Republic hasn't had need of a proper military in centuries or millennia. Worse still, the military they've built has to be done in secret, going from a standing start to first combat deployment in just 10 years, with no institutional experience, no veterans they can use as a cadre, no existing designs that are less than a millennia old, and crucially they have no idea what the enemy will be using. The only example they had is Naboo, basic droid infantry, a handful of hovertanks, some specialist droidekas and that's it. And the Clones as deployed on Geonosis would have utterly annihilated the droid force on Naboo.

So with so little info on enemy capabilities coupled with the secrecy requirement, it's hardly surprising they opted for "jack of all trades" designs, using off-the-shelf designs that could be customised to military use with a modicum of effort (heck, maybe the AT-TE started off as a fire fighting vehicle - stable platform, clear view for the driver, "water cannon" type turret, wide hull for storage). Or maybe they opted for walkers because pure repulsorcraft have difficulties in some terrain (the Trade Fed tanks never tried to push through the Gungan theatre shields, so mybe they can't) or repulsor-jamming technology is relatively available (the CIS used several walker, wheeled or tracked vehicles of their own, almost exclusively) - or high-quality, military-grade repulsorlifts were too expensive/restricted/easily tracked to build up the forces in secret, for both sides.

If i were going to re-design or re-work the AT-TE, it would be relatively simple. Remove the big clear cockpit and have an armoured version, like a dreadnought's conning tower (yeah I know those were rarely actually used), and replace the open, manned turret with either an enclosed armoured one or a remotely-controlled one and have the gunner in the hull.

That's it. The base design works well enough, they perform well in combat in a wide variety of terrains. And that's the kicker I think - it's that jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none - but as the full version of that saying is meant to go: many times a jack of all trades is better than a master of one.

EDIT: Oh, and to address the point you made about walkers being badly-suited for riot control? Maybe it's a deliberate choice, with a big heavy walker you can hear and feel it approaching, rather than a repulsocraft that could be a pizza van for all you can tell. It's intimidation, to get rioters to stop and think "oh shit" rather than "let's continue looting this place."

[Gandalf]

I guess my problem with the "riot police" explanation is that it's back to not making much sense. This is the norm for Star Wars vehicles, but it was nice for it to briefly be different. Why does a riot vehicle have legs? The stability and adaptability aren't needed on nice, paved city streets, which is where riots happen. It's also perpetually close to base, so if we suppose that repulsorlifts need wildly more fuel and maintenance, you would have it. To me, AT-TEs make real sense as long-range mountain mechanized infantry, but if that isn't what they're designed for, then why do they look like that?

Think of the AT-TE as a weapon of terror, like when the US police forces bust out the heavy weapons to scare protestors. Even cavalry makes some rioters think twice apparently.

The AT-TE would scare the shit out of Occupy Correlia. It probably wouldn't need to let a shot off most of the time. The people inside are pretty safe, so no "I feared for my life" moments. Meanwhile they can blow holes in the ground with their weapons with impunity.