How under militarised is the Galaxy pre-clone wars?

[atg]

The ideal use for the clones would have been as Instant Sargeants and Staff Officers, in fact- use them to form the skeleton of a much larger force, use them to simulate the long service professionals and the specialties that take a long time to train, and fill the rank and file out with citizen soldiers, ordinary people the Separatists can shoot at and who can write home to their boy, girl and thing- friends about it all and be interviewed by journalists; with small all- Clone spearhead forces to fight the actually semi- real battles that need to be won, and to shoot Jedi once the occasion arises.

So something like what the German's did having the 100,000-man Versailles Treaty limited army being the core of a future rapidly expanding army? Nice idea.

[thejester]

Except unlike the interwar German Army there's no reason to think the clones would be any better as cadre than local recruits. Personally think it makes a lot more sense that the GAOR was Jedi-centric and that a large amount of the fighting was done by locally raised planetary forces.

[Srelex]

We do actually see non-clone native troops from time to time in both CW series...

[Batman]

Except unlike the interwar German Army there's no reason to think the clones would be any better as cadre than local recruits.

I'd say that's the part where the clones already had extensive military training by the time the Clone Wars started while local recruits...wouldn't.

Personally think it makes a lot more sense that the GAOR was Jedi-centric and that a large amount of the fighting was done by locally raised planetary forces.

Kinda hard to justify it being called the GAOR under these circumstances though (leave alone it going into the history books as the Clone Wars).

[lord Martiya]

At this point internally, I think Palpatine's plan breaks down; this is how you fight a secret war, a war that no-one cares about, and is that not the exact opposite of what he wants? he wants something that gets massive media attention, that moves the people- creates a groundswell that he can ride to absolute power. The last thing that serves him would be a scruffy little skirmish fought in obscurity by invisible assets.

And, incidentally, by attacking the obvious targets (major planets, industries, trading routes, etc.) the droids get massive media attention, and so the troops that fight them.

[ray245]

Personally think it makes a lot more sense that the GAOR was Jedi-centric and that a large amount of the fighting was done by locally raised planetary forces.

Kinda hard to justify it being called the GAOR under these circumstances though (leave alone it going into the history books as the Clone Wars).

The battle of Kashyyyk shows us that the main battle for the planet is quite a small localised affair. The clone wars as a whole seems to indicate to us that ground battles aren't long and drawn out affairs.

Simply capturing the capital of the planet alone is often enough to induce the defending planetary force to surrender.

[CaptHawkeye]

Except unlike the interwar German Army there's no reason to think the clones would be any better as cadre than local recruits. Personally think it makes a lot more sense that the GAOR was Jedi-centric and that a large amount of the fighting was done by locally raised planetary forces.

I think the existence of what are ostensibly Private Military Companies like the Trade Federation supports this attitude. In many cases planets may not raise military forces of their own at all. Simply hiring security corporations to do it for them. (Which probably also includes the protection of trade routes)

The cultural attitude of the Naboo towards war (plus the Republic's heavy reliance on Jedi intervention) indicate to me a society with staunch pacifist views caught up in denial over reality. I think a common manner wars probably played out in the galaxy up until Episode 1 could be expressed as,

Planet A has serious disagreement with Planet B. One or both planets hire a PMC to blockade the rival planet or close its trade routes. Fighting, if any is had, is probably limited to screening vessels trading shots in a number of irrelevant skirmishes. By this point the Senate probably intervenes. Either placing economic sanctions on the disagreeing parties or even the PMCs, or sending Jedi to arbitrate an agreement. Life returns to normal.

What made Naboo such an event was that they were invaded and occupied by a PMC. It was blatant escalation of a military status quo I'm sure many were already unhappy with. The fact that the Senate couldn't even keep planets under the Republic from constantly fighting lots of proxy wars was a big selling point for Palpatine when he replaced it with the Empire.

[Esquire]

Where things get tricky in that model is that the Trade Federation, and probably the other Confederate founders, aren't PMCs, or at least not primarily. Lucrehulks were originally exactly what is says on the tin; hulks devoted to making lucre, largely unarmed cargo ships. The Intergalactic Banking Clan doesn't sound like the sort of organization I'd call to defend my planet if it was attacked, and similarly for the other ones.

What they are is rich enough to buy their own planets, at which point the line between government and corporation gets very blurry indeed. (As far as I know) Neimodia is governed by the Trade Federation; why would I hire another nation to defend mine? The only close parallel I can think of in Earth history is the East Indian Company, and its French and Dutch equivalents.

[thejester]

Except unlike the interwar German Army there's no reason to think the clones would be any better as cadre than local recruits.

I'd say that's the part where the clones already had extensive military training by the time the Clone Wars started while local recruits...wouldn't.

Except that training has come from a template provided by a bounty hunter rather than any kind of corporate or institutional experience ala the Reichswehr. The clones have marginally more book knowledge and that's it - why not just give the template to the local armies?

[Batman]

Err-I was rather under the impression that the clones got their military training as part of their growing up and training on Kamino, not courtesy of Jango's memories (which, incidentally, the Clone Wars cartoon if nothing else supports). Not that I see how that's supposed to work even if all their training came from Fett's memory. The clones are, well, clones. They'd have those memories as per being, you know, clones. You'd transfer those to regular troops-how, exactly?

[thejester]

Err-I was rather under the impression that the clones got their military training as part of their growing up and training on Kamino, not courtesy of Jango's memories (which, incidentally, the Clone Wars cartoon if nothing else supports). Not that I see how that's supposed to work even if all their training came from Fett's memory. The clones are, well, clones. They'd have those memories as per being, you know, clones. You'd transfer those to regular troops-how, exactly?

I didn't mean to suggest it was Jango's memories - my impression was he oversaw training on Kamino, so presumably he wrote most of the curriculum. Either way, the point is that there's no reason to think the Clones have a particular advantage in terms of the content of their training. Yes, they've been trained from birth (which is a daft trope, but anyway) but that's obviously not an option for the force they're joining. So it becomes an issue of whether or not they're particularly better qualified to teach the book than someone else - and that brings up issues of clone leadership ability, differences between species etc. In historical examples of highly successful cadre, like the Reichswehr or the Australian Army, the cadre force has been defined not only by training but also by institutional and real experience of war. The clone army doesn't have that and its training and experience is purely from the book, so why not just give the book to the recruits - particularly in the opening stages of the war when available military forces are clearly at a premium?

[ray245]

Err-I was rather under the impression that the clones got their military training as part of their growing up and training on Kamino, not courtesy of Jango's memories (which, incidentally, the Clone Wars cartoon if nothing else supports). Not that I see how that's supposed to work even if all their training came from Fett's memory. The clones are, well, clones. They'd have those memories as per being, you know, clones. You'd transfer those to regular troops-how, exactly?

I didn't mean to suggest it was Jango's memories - my impression was he oversaw training on Kamino, so presumably he wrote most of the curriculum. Either way, the point is that there's no reason to think the Clones have a particular advantage in terms of the content of their training. Yes, they've been trained from birth (which is a daft trope, but anyway) but that's obviously not an option for the force they're joining. So it becomes an issue of whether or not they're particularly better qualified to teach the book than someone else - and that brings up issues of clone leadership ability, differences between species etc. In historical examples of highly successful cadre, like the Reichswehr or the Australian Army, the cadre force has been defined not only by training but also by institutional and real experience of war. The clone army doesn't have that and its training and experience is purely from the book, so why not just give the book to the recruits - particularly in the opening stages of the war when available military forces are clearly at a premium?

They didn't go through book training alone. I thought they went to simulator training since young? 4-5 years of simulation training would still be better than troops who only went through a few months of simulator training.

[CaptHawkeye]

Where things get tricky in that model is that the Trade Federation, and probably the other Confederate founders, aren't PMCs, or at least not primarily.

They're too heavily armed to be anything but a military company anymore. They may not be one in name, but that matters little considering their nature.

Lucrehulks were originally exactly what is says on the tin; hulks devoted to making lucre, largely unarmed cargo ships.

All while more heavily armed than some warships to boot right? Conspicuous i'd say. Now what occurs to me is that the Federation may foster an image of a Trade union, but the reality is that they are anything but.

The Intergalactic Banking Clan doesn't sound like the sort of organization I'd call to defend my planet if it was attacked, and similarly for the other ones.

They don't sound like one, but when you actually see this "banking clan" has war droids the size of apartment buildings I would certainly consider giving them a ring in the event of war. Like I said, the company's foster an image of non-violent enterprise, but they're actually military companies. They probably do it to ward off open scrutiny by the Senate. Of which the Trade Federation even has seats in!

What they are is rich enough to buy their own planets, at which point the line between government and corporation gets very blurry indeed. (As far as I know) Neimodia is governed by the Trade Federation; why would I hire another nation to defend mine? The only close parallel I can think of in Earth history is the East Indian Company, and its French and Dutch equivalents.

The Trade Federation serving as Nemoidia's government may just be a product of their own culture and history. The Nemoidians have historically blurred lines between private and social institutions, thus when they became part of the Republic the Senate chose to respect their cultural history. Obviously a mistake, since they were also expansionist and fraudulent in accountability. No one was ever claiming the Senate was doing it's job well though.

You would hire another nation to defend yours if the public attitude on your planet as well as others was significantly against war. Naboo was practically de-militarized, and the Naboo themselves looked down on the Gungans as violent because they possessed a military. The Republic revealed little in the way of military force of its own prior to the Clone Wars, and guys like Organa were staunchly opposed to the creation of an armed force. The public attitude towards the military is distinctly negative. Hence why the Trade Federation fosters an image of *not* being a military while fulfilling the military needs of various customers.

[atg]

The Trade Federation serving as Nemoidia's government may just be a product of their own culture and history. The Nemoidians have historically blurred lines between private and social institutions, thus when they became part of the Republic the Senate chose to respect their cultural history. Obviously a mistake, since they were also expansionist and fraudulent in accountability. No one was ever claiming the Senate was doing it's job well though.

IIRC the Darth Plagueis novel explicitly mentions the Trade Federation as a private corporation. There was a Nemoidian 'faction' of it however that only came to power via the influence of Plagueis and Palpatine.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

[quote="CaptHawkeye]
All while more heavily armed than some warships to boot right? Conspicuous i'd say. Now what occurs to me is that the Federation may foster an image of a Trade union, but the reality is that they are anything but. [/quote]


They didn't start out like that, though, until the Trade Federation started its military build up, Lucrehulks were minimally armed, if they were armed at all.

[lord Martiya]

According to Wookiepedia the Lucrehulks had some small weapon to fight back against pirates. The weapons of the ship used at Naboo were already much more numerous and heavier than the original, and even more weapons with better coverage were added before the Clone Wars.

Where things get tricky in that model is that the Trade Federation, and probably the other Confederate founders, aren't PMCs, or at least not primarily.

They're too heavily armed to be anything but a military company anymore. They may not be one in name, but that matters little considering their nature.

Lucrehulks were originally exactly what is says on the tin; hulks devoted to making lucre, largely unarmed cargo ships.

All while more heavily armed than some warships to boot right? Conspicuous i'd say. Now what occurs to me is that the Federation may foster an image of a Trade union, but the reality is that they are anything but.

As far I know, the Trade Federation had a small fleet of dedicated warships to deal with pirates (a fleet that would be confiscated by the Republic after the Naboo crisis), and used a series of crisis and a resurgency of piracy to justify the increased armament on its merchant vessels some time before the blockade of Naboo. The other Confederate founders are the same: they had small legal combat fleets to defend their holdings (most of them being trading companies and the InteraGalactic Banking Clan having a fleet of ships to defend their own communication network and 'harass' insolvent debtors) and used the resurgency of piracy that started sometime before the Naboo crisis as excuse to expand them beyond their original purpose.

[Simon_Jester]

The Confederacy's main corporate members seem to have taken advantage of- not so much their existing fleets, as vast industrial power. They owned the resources to churn out in a matter of months (at most a few years) an armed force greater than anything the Republic possessed.

But this is hardly a surprise, given how much freedom to operate on their factory worlds the corporate powers had. It's the equivalent of Boeing deciding to build themselves an air force- they could, and it could be a pretty damn big one, assuming no government stepped in to stop them.

Except that training has come from a template provided by a bounty hunter rather than any kind of corporate or institutional experience ala the Reichswehr. The clones have marginally more book knowledge and that's it - why not just give the template to the local armies?

There's no evidence that Jango was the only man who helped train the clones. If I were running that program I'd hire many trainers, including mercenary officers, retired generals of local conflicts, and so on.

[Batman]

Unless I'm very much mistaken we see other trainers in the 'Clone Wars' cartoons.

[ShakeyJake]

Unless I'm very much mistaken we see other trainers in the 'Clone Wars' cartoons.

And people like Kal Skirata and Walon Vau are named as part of the Cuy'val Dar.

(Ok, I knew the guy's names off-hand, but had to google to find the name of the Cuy'val Dar )

[thejester]

Silly me, I should have known that Mando would come to the rescue.

[Lurks-no-More]

How under-militarised? Depends on what you mean by that.

The Republic certainly has no standing military force, we know that. But there are various security and police forces that have paramilitary level of training and equipment, at the very least. Furthermore, there are planetary militaries, mercenary forces, pirate hunters, megacorp security branches and so on. So: a patchwork of mostly small, mostly localized military and paramilitary forces, with a bunch of mobile "special forces" units, private and otherwise.

Is this under-militarised? Compared to the kind of a military the Republic could field, absolutely. Compared to the Republic's actual military needs before the Clone Wars? Probably not. Remember, there has not been a war on the galactic scale since the Ruusan Reformation, about a thousand years ago. What conflicts there have been in the mean time have been localized affairs: planetary civil wars, trade wars getting out of control, piracy and anti-piracy actions, small-scale secession movements, clashes with newly discovered alien races and so on. Up until the formation of the CIS, there was no enemy, internal or external, that would have required a more powerful military.

In general, Star Wars works better if you go with a minimalist approach. I'm not saying that Traviss's numbers for the clone army are good, but I'm saying that stuff like million-starship battlefleets are also bad for the feel of the setting.

[Patroklos]

It would still have taken 10 years if they had produced one single clone, and it would have taken no more than 10 years if they'd produced a quintillion. To grow a clone to adulthood the Kaminoan way takes 10 years, end of story. You increase the number of cloning facilities, you increase the number of clones. Fewer cloning facilities, fewer clones. Still takes 10 years no matter what.
And we know that by the time of the OT at the very latest, Stormies were no longer exclusively (possibly not even majorly or at all) clones. And since the guys in the white armour where pretty much everywhere in the OT either they aren't quite as elite as we're told, or not everybody wearing that armour is a actually a stormtrooper.

In the OT most of what we see are shipboard units attached to elite formations. In the movies we are talking about the personal detachments to the Empire's most powerful Moff and its most important project (ANH), The Emperor's most powerful plenipotentiary (ESB), and then the Emperor himself (ROTJ).

Its generally considered that Stormtroops serve as Marines which explains their near universal apperance in most of the EU, so much of it taking place on ships.

The Empire has an Army that is distinct from and far larger than the Stormtroopers. Even organizations like COMPFORCE might be larger.

[Darth Klingon]

I think the Republic had a small military force, but not an army. In TPM, we see soldiers defending Naboo from the droid army.

On the other hand, in AOTC, it's implied that the galaxy didn't have a large military. Mace Windu said, "there aren't enough Jedi to protect the Republic. We are keepers of the peace, not soldiers". If they already had a large army before the Clones, why depend on the Clone Army? Mace Windu's dialogue also gave me the impression that the Republic defended on the Jedi to protect them, which wouldn't be necessary if they had a powerful military.

[ray245]

I think the Republic had a small military force, but not an army. In TPM, we see soldiers defending Naboo from the droid army.

On the other hand, in AOTC, it's implied that the galaxy didn't have a large military. Mace Windu said, "there aren't enough Jedi to protect the Republic. We are keepers of the peace, not soldiers". If they already had a large army before the Clones, why depend on the Clone Army? Mace Windu's dialogue also gave me the impression that the Republic defended on the Jedi to protect them, which wouldn't be necessary if they had a powerful military.

That would make the depiction of the Clone Wars so much more sensible. In the Clone Wars series, entire planets can be quickly controlled once they lost their capital city. This meant you do not need enough ground troops to invade every single major city worldwide, just have enough troop to conquer one.

[The Dark]

And we know that by the time of the OT at the very latest, Stormies were no longer exclusively (possibly not even majorly or at all) clones.

According to an article from Star Wars Inside #96, at the time of the OT, Stormtroopers were about 1/3 Fett clones.