Hoth: The Failure of Imperial Military Doctrine

[Robert Rath]

Hoth: The Failure of Imperial Military Doctrine

The Battle Of Hoth was just the tip of the iceberg on how the Imperial Army was failing in its mission.

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[bdcjacko]

The Star Wars universe is full of logical fallacies. There is no base line foundation of logic to begin with. It is merely computer animated spectical. With that said, there is no point to analytize the "debacle on Hoth." It is clear George Lucas has no idea how real militaries work and it was never nessicary for his story. I am all for there needing to be some sort of internal logic in a fantasy setting, but it is clear Star Wars has none.

 

[Brainwreck]

It's Star Wars.
You don't think too deep about it, because you inevitably end up at Phantom Menace and lose your sanity.

Or at Kotor II and lose all hope.

Edit: I should clarify, I really enjoyed this read. I just don't think it's all that wise to think about Star Wars in any practical terms whatsoever.

 

[bdcjacko]

It's Star Wars.
You don't think too deep about it, because you inevitably end up at Phantom Menace and lose your sanity.

Or at Kotor II and lose all hope.

Edit: I should clarify, I really enjoyed this read. I just don't think it's all that wise to think about Star Wars in any practical terms whatsoever.

I know right? Now if this was Star Trek, then by all means analyze the technical shit.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Issue was he wanted Luke alive, other wise he would have blown the shit out of the place. Also, now they made all the storm troopers clones, it makes that whole battle pointless when all the soldiers are replaceable nobodies. Preferred it when i was a kid and the storm troopers were guys that worked as storm troopers.

But still, cant place real world thoughts and military thinking on a sci fi movie. Its not a documentary, its pretend and there to look awesome. Now lets make a movie with the Nazis attacking the allies with AT-ATs.

 

[Greenshoes]

Quite a good read.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

I actually do find Star Wars discussions interesting, and this article does raise a lot of interesting points. The Imperial Command Structure was intentionally flawed because of Palpatine's plan to pit officers against each other. In essence, Sidious applied the Sith Rule of Two to the entire Imperial armed forces. Officers were encouraged to backstab and scheme their way to the top, and even relatively "good" Imperials like Piett or Veers were not without their flaws.

Piett blackmailed other officers to get to his position aboard the Executor, and was partially responsible for Ozzel's slip up at Hoth. He subtly encouraged Ozzel to make bad decisions by offering advice, knowing the pig headed admiral would ignore him. All to set up Ozzel for execution.

General Veers was a military genius responsible for reintegrating Walkers into the Imperial Army. He was an honorable man, and a smart tactician, managing to take a nearly stationary walker and still manage to gun down high speed Snowspeeders. However, he overlooked the flaw in the AT-AT's design, that it could be tripped with cables. The man responsible for pointing out this flaw, Veers had bumped down to Stormtrooper duty rather than officer material. He tried to cover up his failures rather than solve them. Ironically, this Stormtrooper defected and gave the secret away to the Rebellion, resulting in their disaster at Hoth.

Even among Veer's armored corps, there were missteps. One of his Lieutenants decided to march three of Blizzard Force's Walkers across an unstable Ice Shelf to outflank the Rebels, not taking into account ground clearance, and lost all three of the walkers in an avalanche.

 

[A_Parked_Car]

As a fourth year military history major, I had the biggest smirk on my face the entire time that I read this. Brilliant.

One nitpick would be the caricature of the Second World War-era Red Army. They actually developed an extremely advanced form of combined arms doctrine by the end of the war (Deep Operations). Something that they had been organizing their forces around years before Germany did. Then the great purges took place and with it was chaos that took until around mid-1943 (or early-1944 depending on who you ask) before the Red Army really recovered fully. Not to mention the full-scale reorganization after the Winter War with Finland that was still not complete when the Germans attacked on June 22, 1941.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

I love reading stuff like this. Give a a nerd a universe, and they'll pull it apart, look at it from every angle, then produce a critique that convinces you they should be running every government.

I don't really buy the argument that the armour was better suited for fighting insurgents than open war, though. The stormtroopers seem to die when hit by one of just about anything, from blaster fire to rocks thrown by Ewoks.

And while the "Commandos solve everything" idea has some value, you forget the time limit. The Rebels already knew that the Imperials were coming (thanks to the probe droid), so Vader needed to stomp and crush them quickly, rather than trying to besiege the planet long enough to prepare, plan and launch special operations. He didn't have the time for a lengthy evaluation of the Rebels, because he didn't know how soon they were willing to risk running past the fleet and escaping (thus costing Vader the chance to get Skywalker).

 

[Gorbachof]

So like: History Degree, with some officer training or...?

 

[Joseph Harrison]

Interesting read, I actually like it when people go into really in depth analysis for fantasy stuff. I guess what you point out here is probably why the army doesn't use massive hundreds of thousands of men invasions anymore when small squads can accomplish the objective just as well.

 

[Irridium]

Reading this just makes me wish for another Republic Commando and/or Battlefront game.

 

[Erttheking]

The Empire wasn't that great at waging war? Next you'll be telling me that Anakin was a bit of a drama queen.

 

[Jedi-Hunter4]

It's Star Wars.
You don't think too deep about it, because you inevitably end up at Phantom Menace and lose your sanity.

Or at Kotor II and lose all hope.

Edit: I should clarify, I really enjoyed this read. I just don't think it's all that wise to think about Star Wars in any practical terms whatsoever.

I know right? Now if this was Star Trek, then by all means analyze the technical shit.

I'm sorry but you two need to read ALLOT more of the book's and associated media surrounding Star Wars whether you like the story's or not there are literally 1000's of books on ship specs, alien races, planets, weapons, history's, theology and military tactics of numerous races and forces.

Taking out whether you liked the film or not, please do tell what's wrong with the phantom menace's continuity? It may not have been done in the best way, but I at least hope it was obvious that the 3 main plots of it were the discovery of Anakin, the establishment of Anakin and Padme's relationship and shining the spotlight on palatine's political career and helping him elevate his status in the senate (borrowing aspects from key historical figures rise to power). Not really that complicated.

Hoth: The Failure of Imperial Military Doctrine

The Battle Of Hoth was just the tip of the iceberg on how the Imperial Army was failing in its mission.

Read Full Article

Have to say I'm always critical about any piece on a subject I really enjoy. But really enjoyed the insights. Although I would question that the whole of the Empire turned into station troops, it's hard to keep track of what is recognized cannon an not, but have defiantly read a few books that depict the empire as having at least some decent combat troops. But yer the glaring difference between just the weapons and the uniforms were really good insights as to why things were done in certain ways.

 

[Animyr]

As a fourth year military history major, I had the biggest smirk on my face the entire time that I read this. Brilliant.

I've enjoyed reading the occasional military history book in my day, and I had the same reaction.

But really, when has an evil fantasy empire ever had a competent and professional army? Not often, I can tell you that.

 

[2clueless]

Just another chime-in expressing how much I enjoy reading this column. The subject matter is well laid out and interesting. The depth and reasoning is refreshing. Keep up the awesome work.

 

[Gatx]

I seem to remember something about Admiral Ozzel's little blunder of "coming out of light speed too close to the planet". I got the impression that Vader hadn't wanted the rebels to be aware of their presence as soon as they arrived. Capturing Luke and infiltrating the base first might just have been his plan originally, but his hand was forced. The only thing we're sure the empire lacks at this point is an organisation for tracking and assassinations (see the Bounty Hunter recruiting scene). But then that could be the emperor just being practical: Why go to the trouble of keeping a potentially dangerous agency on the payroll and setting up a training program to make more when you have an entire galaxy's worth of freelance consultants. Seems to be the corporate model these days: keep as few fulltime employees as possible. Plus allowing for an independent bounty hunter economy reinforces the inherent instability of galactic politics. Giving the local governments a means to go at each other's throats ensures the Empire is the only constant authority. We know Hutt Space survived the birth of the empire after all. Divide and conquer.

PS: DO MORE STARWARS THINGS!

But the Emperor DID have a special organization devoted to assassination and spy work - the Emperor's Hand. Supposedly Mara Jade was sent out to track Luke later but ended up locked out of Jabba's Palace during the events of Return of the Jedi. And that's just his personal special forces, I'm sure the Empire has a much more "normal" intelligence network of spies and what not as well.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

It also needs to be addressed that the Tarkin doctrine was an unmitigated PR disaster for the (relatively) young Empire, running in direct contraposition to the 'Republic Era' persona cultivated by Emperor Palpatine as Supreme Chancellor. While the absence of a separatist threat disarmed Palpatines ability to use an armed bogeyman as scapegoat to justify his blatant abuses of power and the democratic process, the only reason there WAS a lack of a separatist threat was because he insisted on exterminating the remaining Separatist leadership and splintering of it's fleets - the deaths of Dooku and Greivous were engineered by Palpatine, and he directly ordered Vader to kill the remaining Sep leadership on Mustafaar. He had an obsession with absolute control and tying up all of his perceived loose ends, completely missing the possibility of using the Separatist's as a persistent bogeyman threat, an underground insurgency which he could have used to draw out his enemies and to promote public concern toward security, continuing his carte blanche to act as 'Supreme Chancellor'. His later attempts to pursue this course after he realized his mistake - and the fact his power as newly crowned Emperor was not as infallable as he thought - is what caused the rise of the Rebellion in the first place - not even going into how he poisoned his own relationship with Vader, which hitherfore had been like a Father to a Son and commanded absolute loyalty (due to his own shift from benevolent chancellor to malevolent mustache twirler and the death of Senator Amidala despite his promises that such could be averted).

As a result, the new Galactic Empire, which should have been heralded as a golden age of peace and security, was almost immediatly tainted with Tarkins terror tactics and the human-centrism that permeated most Imperial politics. Systems that offered thunderous applause to his rise to power would later quietly aide the rebellion, if not directly supporting them in the coming war.

Hearts and minds, folks.