10 FLAWS with the AAT (Separatist Hovertank)

my friends welcome back to another episode of generation tech my name is Alan today we continue our 10 floss series with another tank in our last episode we explained why the 8080 is terribly designed now we'll be looking at the separatist armored assault tank I'm usually not a huge fan of the aesthetics of the separatist droid army whether it's their large dreadknots or the b1 battle droids but ever since I saw the hover tank in episode 1 Phantom Menace being used by the Trade Federation I fell in love with the look and design of this vehicle it's an awesome combination of clean lines and aggressive firepower what's there not to like well apparently a lot like the 8080 the AAT uses an alternative form of locomotion instead of wheels or tracks the separatist hover tank uses powerful repulsors to keep it floating above the ground repulsor technology is extremely advanced in the Star Wars universe and able to propel a wide variety of ground air and even space vehicles it's a relatively stable and reliable technology that can lift the a atees mass off the ground along with 500 kilos of cargo weights we're not given the exact weight of the vehicle but it's probably quite heavy because the AAT tops out at only 55 kilometers which is slower than the massive 8080 which uses likes to move at a top speed of 60 kilometers this makes no sense though the repulsors are supposed to suspend the weight of the vehicle above the ground we're not really sure how this works there's no information in Canon but in legends they claim that repulsors are powered by refined sub-nuclear knots of space-time which sounds like a bunch of space magic to me but they do refer to the technologies anti-gravity several times and note that the repulsors only work when in proximity of a gravity well like a planet or a star so however they work we're pollsters make the AAT weightless there's no contact between the vehicle and the ground so no friction is there to resist movements therefore its speech should only be limited by the power of the vehicles thrusts and friction from air resistance while I can imagine it takes a lot of energy to get something as large as an AAT moving and to stop it but it should be able to hit a sustained speed well over 55 km/h by the way 55 km/h is around 32 miles per hour in comparison one of the non-human Jedi's Usain Bolt can hit a top speed of 28 miles per hour for a short period of time as we talked about endlessly in our last video about the 8080 Walker speed and maneuverability is still incredibly important on the Star Wars battlefield even the best shields and armor can eventually be worn down so it's better not to test them at all in the first place now we know that the 818 is extremely slow and heavy but that weight doesn't necessarily mean the hover tank is heavily armored we've seen time and time again a hover tank can easily be taken out by a shoulder-launched missile like the Plex the AAT did incorporate sloping armor which generally is more effective against kinetic rounds but I think the entire profile of the tank is a little bit too high it could have been made with a much lower profile in my opinion making it harder to hit here's how an AAT would look like next to a more modern earth design tank the AAT was also extremely vulnerable to explosives placed underneath the tank and also towards the rear where all the more important components of the tank were placed as reliable as repulsor technology was there was no redundant system for the AAT if the repulsor generator was knocked out by a well time shot to the rear of the vehicle or if the AAT drove over a landmine EMP pulse weapons also disabled the vehicle making them collapse to the ground and once these repulsors were disabled the tanks were basically impossible to move unlike wheeled vehicles which could be towed by another vehicle now it's unknown how high the repulsors can lift the vehicle layer vehicles like speeders can essentially fly with their repulsors dial to the right setting the ATS repulsors don't seem to have this kind of capability for some reason which makes it unable to tackle uneven ground or more off-road surfaces another unexpected consequence of having a repulsor lift as your main propulsion system is that it can't drive through a deflector shield again we're not given the reason why this happens but I'm guessing it's because the fleckner shields usually contain ray and particle shields which can block both physical objects and also particles it's possible whatever the deflector shields can block will also block the antigravity measures of a repulsor lift and this is a huge oversight in design by the separatist droid army because many large conventional battles in the Star Wars galaxy will include theater shields or even planetary shields while wheeled vehicles walkers and ground units can slowly pass through these shields these Harbor tanks will have to be transported in by another means and they'll have to have the repulsor is completely turned off in order to pass through a shield in some cases they'll just have to wait outside the shield until infantry units are able to take down the generators this one have been such a big deal if the AAT wasn't the separatists main assault tank and armed for that exact purpose no matter how powerful your gun might be if you can't make it to the battle you're pretty much useless the separatist droid army was made up of 100% droids occasionally you'll have an organic or half organic commander and Special Forces might also be organic but there was basically no reason to design organic interfaces for all of your vehicles and technology some designs in the sea is reflected the mechanical nature of their military like the droid fighters or the IG two to seven Hellfire clients droid tank you know what makes the Hellfire class such a great vehicle besides the barrage of homing missiles it has and the wheel propulsion system that allows it a movement probably fast if the Hellfire is ever knocked out no Clone Trooper can go into it and commandeer it and then turn it against the separatist army that's because the Hellfire class then have a cockpit or any interface for organics and because they didn't have these unnecessary compartments and made the vehicle lighter smaller and much faster the AAT for some reason was designed for an organic crew with fully laid out control surfaces when mechanical levers buttons and switches this is a tank designed for a droid army that only uses droids droids that can interface with a vehicle without any physical controls and not only are there controls for organics in the AAT it also requires a crew of four droids to fully operate this creates an open space within the eight which makes it larger and heavier and that open space could have been used for armor or something more important like a shield generator the crew consists of two Gunners a driver and a commander all these tasks should be able to be handled by just one computer brain after all the Hellfire Class droid can maneuver shoot command itself all at the same time with no problem there's only one reason why they want to design the AAT in this way and that's because they want to sell it to organic armies but even then automating the AAT tank by placing an advanced droid brain and it couldn't be that hard after all the ATI being used more than a decade before the Clone Wars even started there is plenty of time to adapt to a new system you're probably better off taking the tanker and assigning them to protect the blind spots of the AAT like the 8080 the AAT was commonly deployed without any infantry support leading to its eventual destruction countless separate tanks were destroyed by infantry units climbing up the tank and then dropping EMP grenades or detonators down into the commander and driver hatches which should have been locked in the first place I mean in world war ii american tankers in the western front typically didn't lock their hatches unless they were completely overrun that's because they had infantry supports and generally german soldiers couldn't get that close to the tank but then again they didn't have [ __ ] jedi running around the battlefield with magical powers distributing detonators to tank crews but it wasn't just the jedi with their supernatural powers during this there's also the clone troopers and your average resistance fighter and that was only because of the lack of energy support but because of the massive blind spots around the vehicle especially in the rear once again we asked the same question we asked in our last episode with the 8080 and also with the x-wing why can't they have some kind of external sensor or hollow recorder that gives the crew inside a 360 view of its surroundings this is Star Wars there are much more advanced in our own society yet our militaries are already testing AR systems as we speak for armored vehicles and although the AAT did have anti-personnel lasers on it they were fixed in a forward position the eighties main cannon was a beast it was able to easily take out Republic ATT ease with a few well-placed shots one of the problems with this weapon though was its massive recoil because the AAT was inverted to the ground and lacked the stability of a traditional firing platform and that's even more confusing because the a18 was occasionally used as an artillery weapon both for direct and indirect fire and without any locking mechanism to secure the vehicle it had accuracy issues especially when firing multiple rounds at the same location unlike traditional energy weapons the eighties main cannon also functioned like a kinetic energy one the AAT was actually equipped with shells that were encased in plasma the claims are that the metal shell helped increase penetration in the round and reduce the friction increasing speed now the penetration region makes sense but I'm not so sure about the friction idea and the increase in speed although we do know that plasma rounds typically dissipate the longer they travel because the plasma cools down now if there is a conductor like metal which is able to surround the plasma where the plasma surrounds the metal I guess it can use as a conducting material to maintain its form for a longer period of time there are also different types of shells from bunker busters the high explosives the anti-personnel and even a special tank that fired defoliator rounds although I agree there are some advantages to having actual shells fire out of your cannon the main problem is now that the tank has to carry a large amount of ammunition which definitely increases the weight of your vehicle and limits how many shots you can fire opposed to a tibanna gas powered laser cannon the AAT can only carry 57 rounds before it needed to be reloaded with a tibanna gas laser cannon your main concern is overheating rather than running out of gas the shell is also dependent on an autoloader system which was just another component that could break down also all the shells were located at the bottom of the tank which also is where the arm rose the thinnest making a small landmine detonation turn into a massive explosion so while the cannons power was impressive it also had some major design flaws which limited the effectiveness of an AAT another option that could either replace or at least supplement the eighties firepower would be missile launchers like the ones we see on the hail fire droid the separatists were known for their advanced missile technology and used it very successfully against the Republic these weapons were typically guided had a much longer range than traditional energy weapons and had more explosive damage the only problem was they're quite expensive and took a lot of space they also could be stopped by countermeasures but typically only star fighters and larger starships had countermeasures while some a eighties were outfitted with dumb rockets imagine how much damage they could do with a few long-range missiles that function beyond line of sight the Republic heavily dependent on line-of-sight weapons an AAT could destroy several walkers before they got even close to them with a long-range missile system and if they had it to bind a gas laser cannons just then they could replace those shells with missiles instead now my last complaint with the separatist AAT is its turrets it hardly ever seems to turn it seems like it has the capability to slightly turn but only when the vehicle is not moving I might be wrong but it's really hard to find footage or information on how much the turret actually moves also because it's located at the rear of the vehicle it can't decline the barrel that much making a huge blind spot in front of the tank now according to my research George Lucas originally wanted the AAT to be more like a heavily armored assault chopper or flying tank similar to behind you can kind of still see some resemblance in its design this might explain why the whole kind of extends upwards so much along the pilot and gunner to sit at staggered heights so that they can both have a clear line of sight even though the separatist tank doesn't even have any viewports the stubby arms on the side of the tank that carries additional weapons also is very reminiscent of an assault chopper and then there's adding a repulsor lift of the tank which is another helicopter light quality that's really what the AAT is also so visually appealing to me he just looks like a giant bird of prey but as a main balancing it just isn't well designed as say the Republic's own hover tank TX 130 saber class well guys you probably watched our last video where we broke down the 10 flaws to the 8080 if not we'll link it in the corner somewhere around here with a card I want to know in the comment section below which tank you better the Walker from last time or the separatist hovertank also let me know what other kind of videos you'd like to see in our 10th law series we can break down anything from vehicles factions the even aliens I guess anyway guys don't forget to subscribe hit that notification so you don't miss out on the rest of our awesome content as usual thanks for joining us today if you're watching this you are generation tech

Channel: Generation Tech

Views: 402,624

Rating: 4.9395337 out of 5

Keywords: AAT, Separatist Hovertank, Hover tank, Armored Assault tank, Separatist Droid Army, 10 Flaws, 10 flaws Star Wars, ATAT, All terrain Armored Transport, Galactic Empire, Star wars tanks, George Lucas, Laser Canons, Repulsorlift, how does repulsor tech work, b1 battle droid, Clone trooper, Clone Army, Jedi, Galactic Republic, Clone Wars, Battle of Naboo, Confederacy of Independent Systems, Separatist Alliance, Grand army of the republic, Best star wars vehicles

Id: mBub5n2-qLs

Length: 12min 28sec (748 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 30 2018