Why Star Wars Ground Battles Make No Sense

[Music] hey guys this is Eckhart slaughter hello and welcome to another Star Wars lore video and before we get started if you guys want to catch some minecraft that I'll be playing with my friends Charlie and Corey grab a few beers come join us over on the second channel x2 at about 9 p.m. Eastern time tonight anyway today I wanted to quickly rant about ground battles in the Star Wars universe and I've got this series where I get a little too analytical and pick apart some elements of Star Wars combat so if you don't like those videos you won't like this one maybe just click off we're all nerds here this will get nerdy and yeah I probably will over analyze the series ultimately made for children but personally I find it fun and I think a lot of people do too and the key here is that we're not evaluating how much sense something makes based on real-world military tactics or science rather we're seeing whether elements of the Star Wars universe are internally consistent so today we'll be talking about ground battles and I love ground battles in the Star Wars universe the Battle of Geonosis from episode 2 was actually one of my favorite bits of Star Wars media growing up I would skip the rest of the movie and just watch that however that battle along with most perhaps with the exception of the Battle of Hoth really lacks something that would make sense in that something is orbital bombardment we know from games like Knights field Republic and plenty of pieces of Star Wars Expanded Universe content that capital ships in orbit are more than capable of bombarding the surface of a planet not only can they say melt an entire city or even the entire surface of a planet but as we see in book two of the thron trilogy star destroyers and other ships of that size can actually target pinpoint areas and destroy them thron uses it on one occasion to cause a massive fire or even to boil seas away to try to expose a submarine to damage however the general tactics of orbital bombardment are almost never used to their full potential probably the best example of this is actually the Battle of Geonosis there were major droid factories and the CIS strongholds on that planet that needed to be destroyed there were Confederate Corps ships that need to be taken out and the Republic did so by landing artillery and troops moving up to the targets and taking them out on the ground and I mean that does work in certain situations but one of the unique things about the Battle of Geonosis was that the Republic had total air superiority we know from both the films and largely the expanded universe that the Republic was able to white pass the few separatist ships that were there however instead of leaving their capital ships in space the a kilometers instead went to ground to dislodge troops now certainly some of the a kilometers did need to go to the planet's surface they had to rescue the Jedi for example however with total air superiority you can also pinpoint targets and destroy them from extreme range with the ground forces having little to no ability to resist perhaps Geonosis had some ground-based cannons or something that made this more difficult but this is just one example of how orbital bombardment is not used to its full extent there are probably hundreds of more examples of this happening orbital bombardment not being used in a case where it could have changed the tide of battle without actually having to risk the lives of your soldiers or your equipment now sometimes there's a rationale that explains this away for example when it comes to the New Republic they generally do not engage in orbital bombardment at least until the Yuuzhan Vong war because it was seen as far far too aggressive to Imperial and that does make sense especially where unlike the Empire the New Republic wasn't really willing to throw away entire populations or planets once the Vong invade however they became desperate and did start to employ the method so that does make sense however and most of the battles I'll be talking about here it's not the Republic but rather the Confederacy or the Empire another thing that stops bombardment can be the presence of ground-based defenses but especially planetary shields and this is why I mentioned that the Battle of Hoth does make some sense because özil comes out of Lightspeed too close to the planet Hoth is able to raise it's shield and death squadrons forced to land troops outside and walk in underneath it presumably because the shield is somewhat like an umbrella if they had managed to get to the planet without alerting the rebels their plan probably would have been to target the shield generators and the cannons from space then establish a blockade and if they're trying to get survivors then to send troops down if they're just trying to wipe up the Alliance then they can easily just do so from space the problem is that many big ground battles actually take place when there's no orbital shield and the planet Yavin which did not have such device actually provides some good examples of this first of all we have the Imperial invasion of Yavin after the destruction of the Death Star and this one's interesting basically the Alliance held off at Gavin until the Empire created the executor class super stardestroyer and if you want to know the reasons why it took so long well I've done a whole video about that anyway eventually the Empire managed to establish a blockade around the planet however instead of just bombing the defenseless rebels from orbit which they certainly would have had the capacity to do they instead sent down bombers and other fighters to try to take out the rebel base from the air and that is personally because it did appear in a video game but just looking at things from a logical perspective the Empire has an unassailable tool in this fight which they did not use the toss edala would make some of the same mistakes when she tried to invade the Aven now home to luke's jedi Praxian after the Battle of Endor she actually did use orbital bombardments somewhat however she did so in conjunction with the ground invasion which I personally think was foolish Dola in this example also had a full super star destroyer she had total superiority when it came to space and realistically the New Republic would not have been able to muster reinforcements to help push her out of her position and in fact she is only defeated largely because someone on that ground manages to steal a tie bomber and sneak it into the SSD let's look now to the Clone Wars and I think there's one example here that's better than perhaps any other that is the attack on Damir the Dathomiri have magic sure but they don't have any ground-based defenses they don't have any capital ships and they certainly do not have a planetary shield Grievous decides that it would be a good idea to actually land on the planet and try to fight these literal witches in direct combat now it doesn't go too poorly for him however a much better tactic would have been to send down some spy drones try to find out the exact location of the enclave if you don't already know where it is and then just vomit mercilessly from orbit anyway there are a ton of examples and when you read the Star Wars Expanded Universe just think about some of the major battles which faction effectively controls space and whether turbo laser fire from space could actually make things easier they work really well not only one one faction has total control of space but also if the enemy is really really dug in or if a ground invasion is just generally not practical or preferable for example on Felucia where the sea is were dug in and the terrain was unfriendly to put it mildly if you're a bad guy faction then really there's no example of when this can't work especially if you're looking to cause fear and havoc for example Jason solos bombing of cash Sheik as Darth Titus is one of the most terrifying examples of orbital bombardment it really shows how terrifying and demoralizing the tactic can be I mean he essentially causes the whole planet to catch fire with a few well-placed shots however you also should think about examples where bombing might not work for example if you're a good guy faction and there are civilians you probably don't want to bomb the crap out of them maybe the Republic for example did not want to do something so violent at the beginning of the Clone Wars or they wanted to capture the separatist leadership which is why they didn't bomb Geonosis it's also possible that there's no intel on an enemy and bombing just wouldn't be effective although I think in that situation one good strategy might be to get probe droids or even bodies if necessary to the ground there's also cases like crate where the enemy is so dug in that even with total space superiority bombing won't be effective sometimes to an enemy presence in space will be too strong and in that case your best chance for defeating them on the ground is to slip transports or other ships down while the big ships engage each other and then I suppose would also preclude getting any sort of guns to the ground finally we have the issues that already mentioned including the presence of ground-based defenses especially shields but I'm curious am I overstating the effectiveness of orbital bombardment is there a specific battle in the Clone Wars that you think could have used a good bombing is there reason besides aesthetics and drama why military leaders seem to prefer to send star fighters down to do direct precision bombing rather than shooting from the space and most importantly am I wrong in saying that Emperor Palpatine should have ordered one of the CIA's capital ships to just accidentally blow up the Jedi Temple when fighting over Khorasan let me know all of that and more down in the comments but until next time guys this has been a carts ladder again drunk minecraft over on my second channel X - link in the description up in the upper right hand corner see some of you then but if not have a great one and may the force be with you [Music]

Channel: EckhartsLadder

Views: 1,362,565

Keywords: why star wars ground battles make no sense, why star wars ships make no sense, star wars battles, star wars ground battles, eckharts ladder, star wars explianed, star wars real life, eckhartsladder star wars, galactic civil war, clone wars, star destroyer make no sense, battle of geonosis, battle of coruscant, battle of yavin, battle of crait, sequel trilogy, #starwars, star wars, orbital bombardment, bombardment, the clone wars, star wars canon, star wars legends

Id: 6LsO_i9Pj9A

Length: 10min 28sec (628 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 11 2020