StarDestroyer.Net BBS

The Stormtroopers could have "borrowed" trained Dewbacks from a local farmer. Given that Tatooine has a large human population, the techniques involved in riding a Dewback ought to be somewhat similar to other beasts of burden utilized by humans, just adapted for physiological differences.

People make it seem as though riding a dewback requires some kind of special skill. There's no reason to think so. Just about anyone can ride a horse if all they're doing is walking and trotting about. Dewbacks appear to have only one speed: walk. I two probable explanations. Either the stormtroopers are from a local unit (like US Army garrisons in the remote deserts of the southwest) or they came from one of the ISDs orbiting the planet and somehow acquired dewbacks when they landed. Dewbacks appear to be fairly common, like horses in the Old West or camels in the Middle East.

I object to the idea of an Imperial Army, but for different reasons than Vympel. I should think there would be many Imperial Armies. Like any empire, the GE would most likely have its core units that can be rushed from one place to another and to handle the most important duties. The rest would be local units, who would handle a lot of the REMF, patrolling and policing tasks.

I doubt that the phrase 'Imperial Army' refers to anything more than the overall authority which governs the individual units: we're not talking about something like the GAR here, this is more a collection of planetary defense forces and such. For example the US army is still called 'an arm'y despite being made up of many individual armies which can be grouped as needed.