Star Wars doesn’t understand Orbital Bombardments
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- Опубліковано 5 кві 2024
- We'll talk the lore of orbital bombardments in today's Star Wars Lore video!
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The New Republic forgetting to use orbital bombardment would be like the US military forgetting artillery exists
More like the US military deciding to not use cluster munitions anymore. They know they have it, they know what it can do, but public opinion doesn’t really care for its use.
You may be right since they barely use it, preferring to use missiles and precision weapons....
Russia on the other hand...
more like forgetting that shore bombardment from Iowa battleships existed and technically still possible, though nobody has done it in a while.
Technically I think we can excuse Geonosis for several reasons:
1. They probably had a shield generator somewhere we never saw.
2. Yoda was trying for a sneak attack, especially to find the confederacy command and end a war before it started.
3. Acclamators aren't the best bombardment platforms like the larger Star destroyers, by the time they wanted to use them too many clones and Jedi were fielded.
@@OverlordZephyrosuh ... You do know that artillery is precision weaponry?
the Republic didn't use their space assets at Geonosis, but then again they also landed the entire army and charged across a massive desert plain with virtually no cover, so tactics and planning clearly weren't used properly
The Jedi were keepers of the peace, not soldiers. So putting then in charge resulted in the blunders you saw. Legends is full of Jedi overriding the practical advice of experienced commanders.
@@_Dovar_ I don’t know. I don’t remember seeing any depicted in the battle, only acclimators.
I think it makes sense if you consider that the Battle of Geonosis is the first large scale battle of it's kind the galaxy had seen for a thousand years. They likely didn't think to use such tactics.
No they did not. The venators came at roughly the same era the Actis-3 jedi and arc-130 star fighters were intruduced.
I disagree, geonosis was an evidence gathering mission. They managed to capture and pull decisive evidence that the CIS were waging a war on the republic and even developing weapons of mass planetary destruction.
Blowing it from orbit doesn't achieve any objective.
Star Wars: *do lame Orbital Bombardments*
Helldivers: "Pathetic. Let's show you how it's done!"
If only the empire hadn't turned its back on sweet liberty and beautiful democracy
If we had an isd for orbital Support Liberty of Planet were done in Minute, remeber empire 50k isd but each hell diver has his own ship, even if its just the size of a korvett
Bombard the planet then from the craters crawl foot soldies, yeah thats terrifying
they still use orbital bombardments, but they just do it when their troops are still fighting there
Super Destroyer: lands 380mm HE shells on 2 of 4 Helldivers, misses every bot fabricator and only gets 3 bots.
Star Wars also doesn't understand: Small unit infantry tactics, combined armed tactics, economics, physics . . . and I'm already bored typing this because I know the list will be so long.
Add the force to that list
Also orbital mechanics limit how long can a ship stay above the target on low orbit. Or if the bombartment is happening from high orbit, well then there is no aiming really.
@@e-jlehti1489i would assume their antigravity/repulsor tech allows them to basically ignore orbital mechanics to a degree, useful for many reasons
@@-_.._._--_.-.-_-_-_-...-.- To be fair, the Force could have been a plausible concept if the Star Wars universe would have been set in a 5th dimension reality. However, George Lucas has the physics education of a 12-year old George W. Bush, so most of the movies were high-drama sociopolitical space fantasies with no concern about even basic physics, just cool special effects, so here we are with the good 70s films, and the dumpster fire cash grab that are the rest. X-fighters traveling at light-speed??? Really??? No time-dilation, no consequences of space debris hitting ANY ships after 10 seconds of the equivalent of going through a paper shredder??
@@e-jlehti1489 No aiming?? We have the ability right now to guide smart bombs to their targets and a far more technologically superior advanced military force with interplanetary travel would not?
In the OG Thrawn Trilogy in the second book, Thrawn showed how accurate an ISD bombardment could be when he ordered on a shot fired near his position to intimidate the Noghri. Best scene ever that showed the power potential of an ISD.
Not only that, he had a Star Destroyer fire one shot at a specific part of a planetary shield where he had a ship parked under the shield equipped with the same weapon to make it look like the shot went through the shield. Only when they got a recording of it the New Republic figured out how he did it and even then they needed to look closely to do so.
Kotor the destruction of taris demonstrates this best
Thrawns trilogies are the closest any from of media gets to actual tactics that would be used by space admirals.
@@ifyourmarriedyourasimpanda7440 Check out the Star Carrier series.
One character's go to is 'throw sand at it', sand moving at just a shade under lightspeed packs a punch.
It's still garbage, hilariously enough.
The most recent example of planetary bombardment that we've seen in live action was the flashback to the purge of Mandalor. As cool as it was to see tie bombers drop hundreds of atomic bombs on the planet, I was very disappointed.
As soon as I heard that the empire bombarded the planet I wanted to hear an Imperial order base delta zero and see 4 + star destroyers fire on the planet until i was turned into blackened glass.
Mandalore already got that treatment shortly after the Ruusan Reformation.
Ahh yes, the Taris treatment.
Edit: oh, he mentioned it
This was especially egregious in The Last Jedi.
That huge Mandator siege cannon ISD thing fired a shot at the Resistance base and the resulting explosion was like 40 feet high.
It was about the same size explosion as the TIE Fighters from The Force Awakens shooting the ground on Jakku.
They goofed the scaling up for sure.
You are speaking about a movie that would have been over if they had made the logical choice and fired on the Resistance ships first instead of the base.
Wait, the movie would have been over if they hadn't waited for the Mandator and simply attacked with the Star Destroyers they had there.
@@Dreamfox-df6bg yeah, everyone's suspension of disbelief took a battering in that movie.
Especially since the canons themselves are like a mile long, it should be making craters at least that big
Star Wars be like: Oh no, we can't kill them, they're just soldiers fighting for the wrong side!
The Covenant: Bibbity boppity, glassing your property
best comment I've seen on this video.
40k be like :
ñø çīvǐłîäňš
@@yahnmahn9035covenant would fit nicely into 40k
@@yahnmahn9035More like: "They're acceptable casualties. The astropathic array objective has far greater value to Imperium."
This post reminds me of a short scene in Babylon5 and why I like it so much.
Londo Mollari : Refa, any force attempting to invade Narn would be up to its neck in blood -- ITS OWN!
Lord Refa : We have no intention of invading Narn. Flattening it, yes -- but invading it? We will be using mass drivers. By the time we are done their cities will be in ruins, we can move in at our leisure!
Londo Mollari : Mass drivers? They have been outlawed by every civilized planet!
Lord Refa : These are uncivilized times.
Londo Mollari : We have treaties!
Lord Refa : Ink on a page!
2:02 In Ahsoka show, the orbital bombardments didn't even send the horses used by Ahsoka, Sabine and Ezra flying.
Sometimes I feel like they forgot the differences between a Turbolaser and a Laser cannon. Cause those blasts in ahsoka gives me a medium-ish laser cannon feeling at most in terms of damage.
My only cope is that the ship was in awful shape and probably couldn’t do full power shots
@@HydratedBeans That and Im quite annoyed that the Chimaera has Imp I main battery TLs. Contrary to what it had in Rebels..... (octuple TLs from the Imp II)
@@DGunter it is canonically an imp 1, so I'm annoyed, but I don't know which show I'm annoyed at
@@Eremiyah Are you kidding? The blasts in Ahsoka don't even feel like they were made from handguns fired from space.
One your last points, I would say orbital bombardments are probably used sparingly due to the mass destruction they create. If you want to recover prisoners or data from computers on the ground for example, an orbital bombardment runs the risk of destroying all that, whereas sending in bombers makes for a more precise attack. Also, if you wanted to take the planet for yourself, an orbital bombardment risks environmental changes; throwing debris into the atmosphere, vaporising water to create cloud layers, and so on.
Exactly. In KOTOR, Taris was destroyed by orbital bombardment. In SWTOR, the Sith Empire claimed it for historical reasons, but the planet is an active drain on resources. Granted, that is partially because of the rakghouls, but it shows how pointless destroying a planet is.
Except as the video said, orbital bombardment need not be so wide spread or indiscriminate. You SHOULD BE able to dial the firepower down to the level of an artillery strike or a bombing run from something considerably less vulnerable than a ground vehicle or fighter.
And that one scene of Ahsoka dodging piddling little blasts from a starship on a speeder bike puts paid to any notion that "wide spread environmental damage" would be the inevitable.
@@noppornwongrassamee8941 I would disagree that Thrawn's attack on Ahsoka is an orbital bombardment. The destroyer was still in atmosphere for starters, and looked to be using the equivalent of anti-aircraft fire to destroy a missile sized object equipped with space wizard powers for added defence. Orbital is more in line with the thumbnail; above the atmosphere, raining fire down at high velocity. Turbolaser fire has, to my knowledge, some kind of mass beyond a real life laser weapon. So, theoretically, the higher up the ship is, the more power that piddling blast will have by the time it hits the ground. I'm not sure off the top of my head, but I think the hypervelocity rod bundles (rods from god) weapon concept might be an example of this.
@@LoneManProductions It's a common misconception, for some reason, that laser and turbolaser weaponry in Star Wars is based on laser technology. They're actually plasma-based weaponry, typically using gas particles (such as tibanna gas) as the medium to form the plasma. There is a mechanism within the weapon that does uses lasers to excite the gaseous particles into a useable form (plasma) which is then discharged in the form of a bolt. So yes, it has mass, and also yes that the level of destruction can be fine-tuned to a certain degree. I firmly believe however that the closer to a target, the more powerful (or perhaps efficient) the bolt would be, if only because a shorter travel time means less energy loss from dissipation. I think it more likely that Disney simply doesn't do a good job at effectively portraying the firepower of ships in Star Wars. Any capital ship worth the name is going to be a formidable threat, and the ISD is one of the most powerful mainline warships in the galaxy. Disney undersells the ship's firepower in every damned space/air to surface engagement, which kind of annoys me.
@@blueleader102 The misconception is due to them being called 'lasers'. it's a real misnomer.
Prolly cause it’s less interesting than ground and space battles
Yeah a battle would end real quick if they just dropped a nuke lol
Star Wars writers have been bad at war including Lucas.
Shhhh... KAYFABE!!!
But sometimes we like seeing absolute destruction.....
Boring answer. We all know the Doylian explanation, the Watsonian one is where things get fun and interesting
I think the reason there wasn't an orbital bombardment on Geonosis is all about intelligence. It was a rapidly planned surpirse attack on a fringe planet with a lrage civillian population and all the military structures either under ground or possibly mixed with civillian structures. They just didn't know what they would be hitting with an orbital bombardment.
This right here explains away so much. Yes they could have bombarded the specific separatist ships planet side BUT those too were close to civilian and more grey areas of the planets infrastructure.
Also the idea of orbital bombarding a world in that situation may have been super awkward. Are we at war? Who is the enemy, everyone here? Also the Jedi taking control and being cautious probably.
They could still lay down a bit of suppressive fire for the gunships as they were approaching their tagets. Fire at anything that shoots at the gunships but only things that are seen to be shooting at friendly forces. There's no need to lay down a ton of (turbo) laser fire and blanket an area with fire if you have precision targeting capability and if you are able to adjust the output of your weapons.
You could also justify it by saying 'these are troop transports they aren't equipped for orbital bombardment'. Since I think in the lore blaster fire sort of fades out after a certain distance. So you could simply state 'most ships aren't equipped to rain hellfire down on a planet'. You could write it off as a power drain and the guns being large and inaccurate. So if you are doing it, you're doing it indiscriminately. So perfect tool for the villains vs the heroes.
I'd counter argue that such a concession has never stopped actual militaries when it's obvious that a target is high priority enough that it must be destroyed regardless of location. The Allies in WW2 were at first willing to do low flying bombing runs for accurate drops on target in cities similar moral concerns. Then they noticed how few planes were coming back, and swiftly went to area bombing.
At the end of the day, you're trying to keep your troops and your people safe, even if that means at the expense of the enemy.
I wonder if they wanted to capture the separatist leadership and hold them accountable. It also started as a rescue mission for two Jedi and a republic senator.
Could also be that the fleet is split in two and there's a space battle above while the other ships land troops.
But let's not kid ourselves: they wanted to show the clones and Jedi go pew pew for the spectacle.
Warfare in Starwars is 100% nonsensical to the point that handwaving deserves producer credits ob a lot of things
And that is ok. Not being "realistic" is one of the major perks of the SW universe.
Yeah, tiny 1-person crafts buzzing around at close range like the WWII fighters they were inspired by doesn't make sense in a space battle either, but it looks cool and is exciting.
We have many real world examples of space battles to draw on, I’m not sure what Lucas was thinking.
@@harzzachseniorgamer5516which is weird that they tried putting so much terrible politics into the prequels instead of riding what the originals did. Series is just fucked lol
@@RM22201Oh shut it with the same old “mUh pOliTiCs”. Go watch original teddy bear wars trilogy since that’s SO “awesome”. 🙄
We didn't see orbital bombardment depicted in the Original Trilogy (excluding the Death Star obliterating Alderaan). However, it WAS mentioned in context in The Empire Strikes Back, and the *possibility* of utilizing the tactic was clearly precluded; General Veers: "Com-Scan has detected an energy field protecting an area of the sixth planet of the Hoth system. The field is strong enough to deflect any bombardment." So while we didn't actually see it, the concept was definitely there. Lucas et al. simply chose a more interesting narrative path around using it as a set piece or plot device. I think, based on Veers' dialogue, it was obviously part of standard Imperial doctrine for planetary assault.
Your title should probably have been, "MODERN Star Wars doesn't understand Orbital Bombardments". Nor do they understand most applied battle tactics or military strategy, across the various iterations of Star Wars in recent years. Very, very little understanding of warfare, even in context (yeah, I'm looking at you, The Last Jedi). Hilarious that a franchise called "Star WARS" doesn't understand how war is prosecuted.
In "The Empire Strikes Back" why not use orbital bombardment just outside the energy field protecting the Rebels on Hoth? The field is unlikely to pass through the snow/ground, and blowing big holes beneath and around the area protected by the field isn't going to help the rebels. Plus any attack drones (like, we have them here in the 21st century, so why wouldn't the Empire have them as well?) could then slip under the field and by pretty much unopposed by the Rebels.
One of the things history has taught us humans here on 21st century Earth is: No "wall" is unbreakable.
@@karlostj4683 I imagine the field would have to be fairly large to be an effective defense; odds are high that the only targetable sites would be well outside the Rebel perimeter and thus largely ineffective. The Rebels always had good intel on Imperial doctrine and tech (from defectors, et al.), and they designed Echo Base's defenses against Imperial attack. In old EU canon, there are planetary shields that can protect the entire surface (I'm not saying Hoth had such a shield). How you fire from orbit would probably be somewhat dictated by orbital mechanics as well.
As for slipping attack drones under the shield or bypassing it...that's exactly what the Empire did, with AT-AT walkers. Veers landed his ground force outside the shield perimeter and rolled under/through it to attack the base. I'm not sure why they didn't use airspeeders or TIE fighters (IRL, probably budget?).
@@Ford2009 I would have thought that budget-conscious Imperial forces would have used far more drones than humans.
A full-planet shield would have been expensive in terms of power requirements. Heck, the Empire didn't protect Endor with a full-planet shield, only the 2nd Death Star. Orbital mechanics only matters if your ships have limited fuel. Even if the Rebel base on Hoth had protected only half the planet, any orbital bombardment at the edge of the field might have blown upen a hole for drones to fly through and into the unprotected ground area. Then the drones at Mach speed could destroy the power generators (as Gen. Veers did) without losing any combat troops.
@@karlostj4683 Doylist reasons why that tactic wasn't employed was because drone warfare hadn't been considered, at least publicly, so George didn't consider that the Empire might use combat drones and its far more interesting how it played out as is. Watsonian reasons are that war automata simply weren't common in the Empire both because of how the Clone Wars played out and because the Emperor wouldn't be able to influence droids the same way he did organics, ie. through the Force. It also helps that the Empire wanted to capture the Alliance leadership not just kill them and Vader was after Luke in particular at this point so even if such a tactic was possible, Vader wouldn't have allowed it.
As for the shield power requirements, you're quite right there; if I recall old Legends data correctly planetary defensive shields weren't all that common and usually were restricted to heavily developed and/or wealthy worlds. To date I recall it being mentioned that Bothawui, Coruscant, Alderaan, Corellia and Ukio all had planetary shield systems and I think most would recognize all but one of those. I recall it being mentioned in the X-Wing novels that persistent bombardment would be able to take down the shields but it usually would take time and result in severe damage to the infrastructure for said shields; if you wanted to either take the shield systems intact or capture something on the surface, you needed to land ground troops.
@@Lorekeeper72 Except...the Empire did use armed drones on Hoth - Chewbacca and Han Solo encountered one and it opened fire on them. So your statement about Palpatine being unable to control them seems a bit inconsistent.
In Rebels when Thrawn did this, the damage done by Star Destroyer's lasers to the surface was so pathetic
That's one of the few things I remember from that show. I expected the lasers to deal the same damage as tactical nukes, but instead, it was closer to hand grenades. Who and why greenlit that scene, I have no clue.
@Ruzzky_Bly4t Perhaps they were using the AA Laser Cannons, the way a AC-130 uses it's 40 MM gun?
Given the Munificent Class and the DS2 can dial their main weapon to achieve different effects, the reduced blast makes sense from a technical perspective as well... though I'd still assume they were using their secondary battery.
Darth Vader saying "Leave nothing alive on Jabiim," and ordering a Base Delta Zero, is the same as the orbital bombardment class Exterminatus seen in Dawn of War 2: Retribution. minus the last round burning the entire planet's surface.
My first experience with an Orbital Bombardment was in Rogue Squadron 3's Defenders of Raltiir mission. The Empire was intending to capture a team of scientists whom developed a powerful shield, which they used to protect themselves from capture. Two Stardestroyers bombarded the city into ruins and deployed a battalion of walkers and APCs to overpower the shield through brute force.
It came down to Luke leading a small strike force of Rogue Squadron to clear away the nearby Imperials and escort the scientists to a blockade runner through Airspeeders and a captured AT-ST.
Thought they were fun missions.
Same here I haven't played that game sense I was 12 when I had a game cube thanks for reminding me about it's been 13 years since I've played
Star Wars orbital bombardments are like laundry in Ghostbusters…
There are many subtle levels
………..
Also that episode of Rebels where the transmission cuts to “another successful application of the base delta zero initiative” was WAY too dark for a kids show.
Wait what's the base delta zero initiative??
@@FormerlyDuck Base Delta Zero is the empire's code phrase for glassing the entire planet, total extermination of its entire populace
@@FormerlyDuckIt’s the “tactical” term for brutal and total orbital bombardment
Good one, the Ghostbusters reference got me to laughing!
Base delta zero…
Blast a planet down to molten rock. No land, no water, just lava across the entire surface. The base delta of living creatures across the entire planet is zero.
I personally think a good way to deal with this is to just say that orbital bombardments are not that simple. It's not like you can just point your space gun at a ground target; there's a lot of atmosphere in the way. You're likely to have targeting issues, and a turbolaser powerful enough to punch through the atmosphere is likely to be too powerful to have any kind of precision. Unless your plan really is to burn all your ships' power to destroy _everything,_ bombers and ground forces will probably do the job better.
Explain why increasing the power of a laser decreases its precision.
I like what you are saying. It seems that ground based guns and laser cannons are very close range when compared to capitol ship fire in space. For direct fire, it's 2 to 18 km max, from what I've seen in lore. And anything above 3 km is considered most impressive. Whereas, fleet engagements, and inherently orbital bombardments, can have ranges of 40+ km.
Given, Tubolasers are magnitudes more powerful than laser cannons, but I can see how maybe the atmosphere hinders or works to disperse a lot of that energy or the photonic element in 'laser blasts' that normally wouldn't happen in space.
@@demonzabrak On the simplest level, more power leads to broader destruction. All that energy has to go somewhere. You need to use the appropriate amount of force to do the job. You wouldn't use a sledgehammer on a carpenter nail, right? If the enemy is holding a valuable strategic position, or if you mission is to secure something valuable, you generally want to avoid damaging the surrounding areas. Trying to use the big guns to support ground operations might end with you vaporizing the hostages you were trying to rescue, or destroying the government building that has information you need. And that's not even considering the effects the atmosphere would have on your space weapons (Not that Star Wars has cared that much about the difference between atmosphere and vacuum.). Bombers and ground forces generally have a lot more control over what their weapons actually do.
@@EternalFireseal okay, so you meant decreases the precision of the explosion, not the actual laser. My bad.
@@demonzabrak FWIW if you're pumping more power into a laser at fixed wavelenght, then even if the targeting of the centroid has the same precision you're going to have a beam that is either wider or sustained for longer. The former case is obviously less precise. The latter will be due to the heat generated over the course of the shot: the later part of the beam will have a greater variation than the first part.
My issue with Dala is that shes described as a military genius so much so that Tarkin took notice of her and personally promoted her... but she's written as little better then an idiot.
The writers don't have to come up with good counters for heroes to use if the villains turn into idiots.
The problem with writing geniuses is you have to be a genius to do it.
@@demonzabrak in many ways yes but also with the military you have a lot more leway then you do in something like math. I mean look at how Zhan wrote Thrawn.
@@jacobparslow8723 I'd have to find and read a series of books to do that, but I only had to check wikipedia to note that Zhan was at least part way to a PhD in physics. You don't do that without being smart.
Now to be clear, you don't have to be the same level of genius to write a genius, because you have more time to write a reaction than a real person would have time. Sherlock Holmes was more intelligent than his writer was, but the writer had more time to think about it. Some average joe just wouldn't have the lateral thinking and the right blend of creativity and realistic knowledge to do a character like that.
I'd wager Zhan is technically a genius, using old school Mensa rules, which is two standard deviations above the mean. Course, they stopped labeling people that because it wasn't PC decades back.
Yeah, the point about orbital bombardments being brutal is lowkey valid. Star Wars warships, especially in Legends, can get fuckin big and beefy with turbolasers comparable to city blocks in size chucking our firepower comparable to nuclear bombardment - if a bit lower in scale than some bullshit like the Tsar Bomba.
Even with absolutely pinpoint aim, the amount of environmental damage alone that could affect any civilian population for possibly years to come is something to consider - nevermind if the target is anywhere near a population center or god forbid IN one. You can't just say "whoops sorry bad aim" if you level an area the size of Long Island to destroy a couple bases.
This is why Foot Soldiers are still needed and why no army, most armies on earth ever goes to full scale bombardments and say that this is the only real and truly effective way to deal with a small group of people or a small building.
Rarely and I mean it, would they do this or send a strategic asset to level an area and when they do, it is after seeing all the options there a d picking the better of all the bad options there.
Also Star Wars orbital bombardments are just, inconsistent and at best, maybe consistently shown to be equal to modern day artillery fire. If it did have, always, 100MT of power per bolt, then it hitting a structure would level 10 miles of a location and vaporize around 63% of materials around it. Meaning you needed 1 shot to level 87.975% of locations in Star Wars that we see them fighting in. Same with anything that is said to have that energy yield of a ISD.
Hell even blaster bolts don't deliver what they said on the tin for it. We see kill shit bolts hitting trees and only leaving charring marks on them and that's all, so for it to be as hot as 1200c to 6000c, that tree would be set on fire along with all dry vegetation and much more, making a blazing inferno that would spread far and fast as that bolt would travel further and not be stopped by a tree. Maybe even making it explode from how much it vaporize and bolt the water in it is a better way to look at it, but if it catches fire, then it will most likely make it a forest fire.
Snow and any other liquid would be super heated, boiling water that you wouldn't even touch even causing a modest explosion whenever it got hit with water vapor and trails being left over that you couldn't walk in.
In Kotor once the main villian learns you might be alive on the tutorial planet his first action is to glass it from orbit.
If I want to be charitable and make up the best in-universe explaination I can think of: orbital bombardment requires big, very valuable assets, to hover over the target for prolonged periods, and focus their power on their big weapons (probably at the expense of shielding?). While doing so, they are vulnerable to ground-based weapons, or fighters, especially if they are on their own or with limited numbers of support ships, which seems a common thing in the Empire.
I assume it is easier and cheaper to build very powerful ground-based weapons than the shielding required for a spaceship to withstand the ground-based firepower (Hoth's cannon?).
If the ground facility is a military base, key industrial asset or anything of such strategic value, you can expect it to be either hidden/underground and/or heavily defended. Even if the orbital bombardment destroys everything on the surface (potentially killing a lot of people you would prefer to take hostage/interrogate/recruit/coerce into service), you will need a ground invasion to secure the facility (or what remains of it), while taking the risk of your very expensive ship, coming from a very predictible direction and remaining static, be targeted by powerful weapons specifically intended for this situation.
Also, perhaps you want to capture the target, instead of destroying it. In this case, the orbital bombardment could be a good idea to soften the target's defenses prior to a ground invasion, but you run the risk of destroying the valuable parts of it. You might also make it more difficult for your ground forces to invade the target (destroyed roads, bridges, debris on roads, enemy forces hiding in the ruins), and to hold it after conquest.
Planetary shields seem to be quite common in the galaxy. Prior to orbital bombardment, you might need to send a ground army or commandos or spies to destroy/sabotage/deactivate the shields. Orbital bombardment is then likely to cause friendly fire.
The threat of orbital bombardment on civilian centers might be preferable to actually doing it and risking the expensive ships, especially if your strategy relies on people thinking of these ships as invulnerable.
Also, orbital bombardments may be considered overkill, unnecessarily brutal and overall taboo (esp against cities). If so, doing it might harden opposition, make it difficult for your faction to be likeable and spark rebellion in other places.
@@nicklab1927 Related to this (I don't know if you knew this already, but anyway), the Templin Institute made a video about orbital bombardments and planetary assaults, where the first half is basically Mark disputing the point of the latter being made obsolete by the former, bringing up as an argument the fact that orbital bombardments, due to their sheer power, could be (and should be) considered weapons of mass destruction. Very interesting
This was the point I was looking for or going to make. In general it is far easier and cheaper to build ground based weapons of comparable or greater power than it is to build vehicle based ones. With the tracking technology the defenders should have available, firing weapons from orbit would seem like a very efficient way of telling the ground based guns exactly where your ship is above them. I can see not wanting to do that unless you are pretty sure nothing substantial is going to fire back.
#AskEck I think Lucasfilm should pursue adapting George Lucas's sequel treatments in comic form and getting Lucas himself to consult on it. This may sound like an out-there idea but Lucas was clearly unhappy that the story of his sequels was never told, he's had a life long love of comic books as a medium and even though he's retired, he's always been happy to consult on projects whenever Lucasfilm have asked him to (Solo, The Mandalorian, Dial of Destiny, etc). For Lucasfilm's part, they're fine with producing non canonical content like Visions and the rumored 'What if?' series. Marvel Comics are also currently publishing 'What if?' Alien comics and Dark Horse recently published a comic adaption of one of James Cameron's old drafts for an Avatar sequel, so I don't see why Lucasfilm can't get either company to give Star Wars the same treatment. It could even be nice way to celebrate the upcoming 10 year anniversary of the beginning of the sequel trilogy, taking a look at what it could have been. So, what are your thoughts on this? Do you think it's an idea Lucasfilm should pursue?
i would love that but it does seem like lucasfilm aren't interesed in actually consulting him on any important star wars project, which is a real shame
5:08 To be fair, I'm currently reading the Trilogy and Daala seems pretty incompetent...
I found her to be far more informed ability than actual. In the Jedi Academy series, she loses her entire 4 Star Destroyer command. The first loss was fair since the Force, super weapons, black holes and surprise are a potent mix. The second was lost by using two decade old tactics and foiled by a similarly taught "scholar". The third was to be sacrificed by ramming a planet for dubious reasons before she countermanded her order to catch that pesky super weapon she'd been guarding for 20 years before nearly losing her flag ship in the same attack. Toddler tantrum? Yes. Tactical genius? No
Thrawn in Rebels uses orbital bombardment to weaken the rebels on Lothal. In his case he wanted to get them to completely surrender and also punish them.
And I'm surprised you didn't use that.
One thing I really like about orbital bombardments in Star Wars, is how the Empire named it. 'Base Delta Zero' is actually very clever wordplay that describes the action being taken, while also sounding like the name is an actual coded military operation.
Breaking it down, Base refers to the target, Delta refers to the shape of a Star Destroyer or battle group, and Zero refers to reducing the target to molten slag.
Star Wars loves its ground battles. It's basically World War 2 style infantry battles with some medeval (laser) sword wielding wizard-knights. But when you live in a universe where orbital bombardment exists, this makes no sense.
In the first episode of Star Trek (the Cage) it is established that the Enterprise has the firepower to melt a continent. As a result, there are basically no large ground battles in Trek, aside from small scale commando raids, because it would be pointless.
3:24 this passage from Jaina"s POV has always stuck with me, such amazing writing. One of the best passages in all of the EU
My favorite section when they asked if the vong were going to meet the New Republic or the Rebel Alliance? He responded Empire. Wasn't also an imperal academy graduate?
In the Bad Batch season 1 finale the destruction of Kamino was well done. You understood the hopelessness of being under starship guns. In Rebels, Thrawn uses an assault on shields to make a point. I thought his use of psychological warfare was interesting to see in Star Wars.
I will never get tired of your outro. Best on the platform IMO
CONGRATS ON 1 MILL ECK!!
I remember that scene in Ahsoka. I was literally yelling at the screen how it was like they were dropping grenades from a STAR DESTROYER
I liked how Thrawn's orbital bombardment of Lothal was portrayed in Rebels. Nifty visuals.
We have only seen it in live action three times the bombardment of mandalore is a bombardment of Bo-katan's Castle, and is a bombardment of Peridia. I've heard there have been other bombardments in the comics but that is about it. I always enjoyed the idea of orbital bombardment as a neat sci-fi concept until Earth could really do such a thing.
There’s also bombardment in the Legends novels. A notable one took place during the Yuuzhan Vong war, were the New Republic pretty much glassed part of the surface of the planet Borleias
I remember being very excited about the Lusankya bombarding Borleias since not many books bothered with orbital bombardments, let alone one from a SSD.
For the prequels we can say it is Palpatine stopping the orbital bombardments. For the other examples it doesn’t make much sense as far as I know. As long as an enemy force doesn’t have shields, civilians near by, friendlys near by, hostages, or minimal damage for what ever reason. Then why not glass the enemy? Since in war the goal is to kill others does it really matter how it’s done? What’s the difference between sniping a guy, getting in a tank and rolling over a guy, invasion and blasting every guy with the wrong color hat on, and glassing a military base?
There’s a small scale difference between a few artillery batteries and the entire might of a 19km long SSD. Considering one was meant to provide semi accurate fire 24-30km away, and the other is firing from literal orbit with enough fire power to crack continents.
#AskEck What do we know of the development of the Venator? Was it ready at the outset of the Clone Wars or did it enter service sometime after it began? And what did the Republic Navy have before the Venator (and by extension, the Victory) came into service that could stand up to Seperatist capital ships?
Lore ship Versus video request:
Resurgent vs. Starhawk
Tie Striker vs. New Republic V-Wing
World Devastator vs. Vong Worldship
Tie Silencer vs. X-83 Twintail
Tie Silencer vs. Tie Defender (legends version)
Keldabe vs. ISD II
MC90 vs. Nebula class star destroyer
Nebula class vs. Pellaeon class
Majestic class vs. Bothan Assault Cruiser
EAWX: FOTR’s Mandator II portrayal vs. Subjugator
Praetor vs. Subjugator
EAWX: TR’s Mediator portrayal vs. Resurgent
Starhawk vs. Bulwark MK III
Gargantua/Aratech 520 Battle Platform vs. A6 Juggernaut
It entire service sometime after it began and in the beginning they had the acclamators.
And they had bevor the clone wars a few mandator 2 dreadnoughts but at this time they hadn't so much weapons and strong shields
#askeck Did the Ancient Sith know about the Star Forge? Ajunta Pall alludes quite heavily to the treasure of the Ancient Sith from his era to be the Star Forge, but I have yet to see this referenced anywhere else. I don't believe anyone other than the Rakatta, Revan, and Malak had anything to do with the Star Forge, or even had any knowledge whatsoever about its existence, and yet Pall seems to state otherwise and the Star Map is located within Naga Sadow's tomb, which couldn't have been a coincidence.
Continuity error? Plot thread left unresolved?
I've always wondered about this and it can only be either him alluding to something completely hidden and secret or referring to the star map indicating they knew about the star forge. Tho ofc this doesn't fit with the lore which makes me think originally it was gonna be an ancient sith weapon until it was changed to the rakata which I think was the right decision if that's the case
It's hard for writers to make characters smarter than them. When you grew up eating glue, it shows when you try to write TV.
They could have done alittle research beforehand. Its just annoying watching clones straight into enemy gunfire when they're supposed to be an elite army. Lazy writing.
Mentions Battlefront 2 and doesn't even talk about the good one. "So we blew them up, blew up the droids, blew up the factory. . . Damn near blew up the planet"
In legends turbolasers had destructive output in the Gigatons, the acclimator itself had 200 gigaton turbolasers (more than enough that one ISD would wipe you a entire Covenant fleet from HALO). So, if you want a planet to occupy orbital bombardment wouldn't be the way to go (which is why the Empire just BDZ'd planets, they were much more callous). A star destroyer in Legends could completely atomize the surface of a Planet within a single hour.
Which is complete and total nonsense and is contradicted by basically everything seen in the absolute canon films and shows. The _200 GiGAtOn_ wank was always stupid.
You don't have to glass the planet, you just limit the amount and time you fire at the planet. You use it just enough to soften your target or, at the least, keep the enemy's head down while you land your forces. There's a concept/docrrine in atillery called creeping fire where you fire your artillery ahead of your advancing forces and you only let up once your forces have reached their objective and/or about to engage the enemy forces and you risk friendly fire if you continue.
That wasn't even legends. The material was from calculating the energy requirements to completely vapourize asteroids in ESB!
The 200 biggatons figure come from Curtis Saxon, whom he pulled out of his ass. If the Empire really had such powerful weaponry, the small Rebellion fleet would have had no chance at Scarif against two SDs and the Empire would have bombed Hoth until the entire ice melted and flooded the Rebel base, not to mention the resulting debris thrown in atmosphere would have made any ship escape impossible. The Death Star single reactor shot that obliterated Jedha and Scarif base are much closer to 200 GT blast, and those events were treated as extraordinary in-universe. Hell, in case of the latter, the shot penetrates the planetary shield of Scarif.
200 gigaton is BS if you know what 200 would look like, you would intimately understand how stupid that is for an ACCLAMATOR of all ships.
The tsar bomba was 50 MEGAton or 2*10^17 joules a 50 gigaton bomb would 1000 times more powerful than that let alone 200. You are going to cause TECTONIC damage to the crust and tidal waves will rise in a single shot. This is an absolutely stupid number. how do you even get the power generation for multiple of those?
I always figured they didn't use orbital bombardments on certain areas. Because although they could wipe out the enemy in an area, they could end up destroying valuable data that may be necessary to learn more about their enemy, which is why they go on foot.
first time watching in a few years, glad you hit 1M! ggs my brother
Orbital bombardment is a tactical choice! It just depends on the person, & their personality!! Empire at War, & especially Forces of Corruption had Orbital Bombardments in those games, only if you had the required ships in orbit! & the more of those ships you had in orbit sped up the recharge of the orbital bombardment attack option! I only used it in FoC, because only 1 faction could precisely hit the specific target I wanted taken out (military targets only, base buildings & heavy vehicles [walkers, etc., if you time it right])!
You could explain it with consumption of inert gas/tibanna. Maybe one Star Destroyer hast just not enough of that stuff or they're always near empty, like it was with tie fighters
Personally I think the best explanation is normal turbo lasers aren't effective due to atmospheric dissipation. By the time it gets to the surface the plasma has dissipated to much due to the planets ozone layer and higher density air the more it descend to make it effective.
we see just how accurate an ISD could be in an example you said. Thrawn shooting at the Coral Vanda. he was able to land shots on either side of the ship. Close enough to do some damage designed to make it surface
It would honestly be a great plot device for SW to just make ground-based shield generators pretty ubiquitous. Any self-respecting (and many non-self-respecting) facility or settlement has a shield which protects it from smaller scale orbital attacks. Of course a Star Destroyer can rain down enough sustained fire to overcome smaller defenses, but there needs to be protection from random pirates or even just an individual zealot with a small starship.
Daala: We’ll land our forces on Yavin 4 and destroy the Jedi!
Pellaeon: Why not just bombard them from orbit? That way we could get the job done without losing any of our forces?
Daala: Nah my idea is better 🤪
This is why Thrawn picked him as his protégé.
man I remember watching this guy back in middle school in like 2018, those are some good memories.
In Universe, the Battle of Geonosis didn't have orbital bombardments because IMO the GAR was full of rookies that didn't know what they were doing. I mean, just look at what they did with the ground assault, that was a disaster. A lot of mistakes were made that day.
It is impossible to be both a rookie and a general. Even a general that has never once led an actual force in battle has to have, at a minimum, two decades of experience in training and studying doctrine and strategy. And that's the absolute genius best of the best timeline. You'd be hard pressed to find an example of a military commander since the birth of firearms that wasn't a revolutionary leader like Napoleon who shot up through the ranks because the army they were affiliated with literally had no qualified generals in the first place. Napoleon wasn't even that good, he just understood the new weapons well enough that the creative new tactics caught the older enemy generals off guard. Once they adapted to the changes in practical reality borne from advancements in weaponry, and combined that with good fundamentals, Napoleon stopped having one sided wins and started narrowly scraping together victories through unsustainable losses of manpower.
Until he ran out of manpower and lost. Kids are always better at the new hot thing. Napoleon wasn't special, just lucky.
@@demonzabrak Well that was a waste of time on your part...
We're discussing the Grand Army of the Republic in a fictional universe, not Napoleon or the criteria real generals are required to meet.
The clones were fresh out of training with no practical combat experience, but they followed their orders as they were programmed to. The Jedi who functioned as generals had no practical experience in full-on warfare despite being effective combatants, and their choice to simply rush the Confederate forces on the ground reflected that. Otherwise they would have at least leveraged their naval forces accordingly and had a much better time during that battle.
Virtually nobody on the side of the Republic knew what the fuck they were doing during Geonosis.
@@cd5sircoupe The clones spent years training and running simulations. The commanders on the field would have been able to study historical conflicts. They even showed big scenes of clones sitting at computers training battlefield tactics on Kamino, where the guy leading Obi around says "We take great pride in our combat education and training programs." Jedi are supposed to train to remove ego, so they should know to listen to the commanders that had studied historical conflicts. The growth acceleration was said to take "half the time" to produce a mature clone, and they spent their whole life preparing. Finished clones look to be 30-ish, and that means 15 years of growth, and they are already training tactics by the age 5, which puts the ready ones at a a minimum of 10 years training.
Here's the clip with that quote: ua-cam.com/video/LXLQaVgCP_Q/v-deo.html
It was just bad writing by people that didn't know or care how military tactics worked, and just wanted cool shots, not some intrinsic in-universe explanation that makes sense. The established lore didn't support the bad strategy we saw on the screen.
Also I sorta just wanted to diss Napoleon, he gets to much credit. I should have spent more of that time talking about the in-universe stuff. The clones were supposed to be skilled. The Jedi should have known to take the advice of Colonels and Captains that had more applicable knowledge than they did. Does my point make more sense now? Sorry about getting lost in the weeds the first time.
The amount of damage caused could be circumvented by using precise ground support weaponry. You don't *have* to use your main batteries to slag the planet, you can just use your point defense or your support ships. So even for the New Republic, it should have been available as an option.
It might not happen often but the Empire had an actual code for Extreme levels of orbital bombardments "Base Delta Zero"
Also, to bombard planets you don’t even need a bomber, just a large cargo ship equipped with a gravitational beam. You see, planets, from the point of view of space, are huge gravitational wells, and if you have the ability to move through space, you are outside this well, and you can, say, pick up a stone and throw it into the well, and this stone will fall to someone on head at the bottom of this well. And you see, there are a lot of huge boulders in space. You find a huge rock, and then you push it with a gravity beam so that it reaches the enormous speeds at which your ship moves, and then you throw this asteroid at the planet, perhaps even with precision. Most of the stone will burn, but even the remnants will be enough to overload the shields, or even make life on the planet unlikely. You don't even need a death star - just build a space excavator that can push the moons of planets onto the planets themselves.
I think the writers of Star Wars fail to realize that the same guns that are used in space can be used on ground targets. It's effectively the same as a naval bombardment of shore targets, but the shore is now the entire planet. It's often done to soften up targets before an actual landing or to apply pressure to a fortified position during an attack. There's no real reason why both the Republic or the Empire don't do it, other then the writers don't make them aware of it.
"the most famous orbital bombardment" - kotor. Kamino, Mandalore.... am I a joke to you ?
Grievous' orbital bombardment of Oben in the "Sahuldeem" fan written origin story is the most jaw dropping instance of the tactic I can think of. Seriously if you're reading this comment, go read that story it's phenomenal.
Good video. How would the Battle of Attilon (weak orbital bombardment) and The Night of A Thousand Tears (bombers instead of bombardment) fit into this discussion?....
Between this channel and spacedock, I get a lot of space/star-wars stuff. Speaking of which, someone should suggest Spacedock do a follow up to this video, about orbital bombardment in general.
Also, to me, nobody WANTED an orbital bombardment. I don't care what the books "say" about the weaponry used. I care about what we SEE the weapons doing, especially how accurate (or more accurately, INaccurate) they are. As such, to make orbital bombardment useful, one basically needs to write-off the ENTIRE AREA being bombarded. If there is ANYTHING that you don't want being destroyed in the area, bombardment is just out of the question, send in the troops and maybe the fighters.
Congratulations on the 1 million subs
Thrawn Orbital bombardment all had pathetically small explosions
I guess empire just uses training rounds for it, cant have your enemies brutally evaporated 100m from their base.
They don’t have them used much because they would simply be too OP. You wouldn’t have much action to show of the main characters. They’d just be on a ship, as we watch them watch an orbital bombardment for 20 minutes.
The scale of the space weapons in SW is just so immense, and since they want to have character based scenes, you’d either have everything destroyed, or have people on YT making a video about “why does the (insert faction) suck so much at targeting with their orbital bombardment?”.
They’d either have to seriously scale down the blast impacts, always have shields, or have some reason to explain why they missed enough for the main characters to still be able to go to the surface to fight.
i mean we're talking about a universe where the strongest soldiers prefer melee combat, so it either comes down to the republic forgetting about orbital bombardment because they're used to having men on the ground, or because they just don't find it honorable
It's for the same reason Star Wars writers typically don't write BVR ship to ship battles. BVR weapons are technically in Star Wars. Starkiller Base was the ultimate in BVR offense: a weapon that fires at targets anywhere in the galaxy through hyperspace as opposed to flying a big gun through hyperspace then firing it from orbit. Can't really top that.
Sure, one can write in a device to address the dearth of BVR battles/weapons (Minovski Particles), but at a certain point a balance between hard sci-fi and accessible storytelling has to be met. The latter happens to be more interesting to watch.
On Geonocis it was not Possible to get a Fireing Point in Orbit becouse of Anti Space Weapons. It was in the Videogame where you fight there. One of the missions was to destroy a Batterie preventing Bigger Ships from Overflying.
And THIS is WHY I was So Mad watching Asoka ride a wolf thing, while Thrawn’s Star Destroyer could NOT HIT HER?!??! Seriously?!?!?
Star Wars orbital bombardments : 🙂
Halo orbital bombardments : 💀
Warhammer 40k:
Maybe livable planets aren't an unlimited resource as many seem to believe.
Blasting Alderran was a comic waste of a planet for human like. Not that Tarkin would care.
From my wife (the bigger SW geek): Orbital bombardment is really designed to leave nothing behind, so if there's anything-including possible intelligence-that you want to extract from a location, you can't bombard it like that.
Its the big ones. But orbital strikes can also be VERY precise at the same time, eliminating singular target at a time.
The Republic seemed to mess up as using the Aclimators like said... Transports.. "Not wanting to be brutal in a battle..." ISNT how battle works an especially not wars... once the other side realizes theres limits to how far youll go they'll use that to advantage.. if they wanted to end the war before it started, with just 1 Battle, as they probably tried an planned.. they shoulda brought enough ships to bombard an go after fleeing capital balls of ships to catch or destroy.. at very least thatd crippled the early CIS if not shortened the war CONSIDERABLY from a tactical standpoint. The point, among war points, the GAR failed with was hitting them HARD not just fast.. Crush your enemy now to prevent exactly what happened. Happens an many sides in a conflict find they have to do similar. Depends on what one is willing to do to win
They didn't get the venitors until after the war started
@@andrewhoughton8606 true BUT the Aclimator has been ruled to be the kinda space heavy cruiser/battleship the GAR seriously needed for the time by quite a few sources least until the first Victory SDs started finally coming out near the end of the Clone Wars.. least when the Aclimator was modded for the deep space Battlecruiser role. Or so I've heard.
@@robertagu5533 Not really. Its a fine ship, but against full-sized behemoth of a battleship (that is actually two)...no chances. They werent evaporated during initial assault only because CIS command was even worse, these guys werent ready for anything at all.
@@alexturnbackthearmy1907 Lukerhulks were okay BUT they was at they best in 1 piece. That giant flying ball portions is NOT really able to protect itself BY ITSELF. An it showed AND its ALSO those are the "Hulk"'s MOST important part. Basically the Command an Control. The rest isn't very useful if at all without THAT part.
An remember it was an absurdly big Ambush. What I said is basically outta our "Art of War" manual.. A.K.A. "The Holy Bible of Warfare." When you hit with not only surprise but with crushing power too on an enemy caught flat.. like the CIS.. you can cripple or nearly eliminate the otherside. Sometimes end a war like the Clones War BEFORE it starts. But As we all know both sides were played, probably held back a bit, OR stupid inept at times.. like the fact the GAR as quality as is basically dropped both a huge Armada and massive invasion army of EXCEPTIONAL soldiers equally well equipped.. so little oversights an ideaolgy like that had dire consequences
If it was illegal under the old republic that would explain why they couldn't use it in Geonosis. And why acclimators were designed primarily as transports.
A big one is like they didnt put turbolasers visibly on the bottom of Star Destroyers. And yes it’s space they could float upside down but the lasers are seen exiting the bottom of the Star Destroyers in animations. Sure they could be tubes that fire straight off the bottom but it just shows they put less thought into accommodating orbital bombardment
Damn it. Eck beat me to the Vong example.
I think it's because they're just too logically optimal. Like in the Star Wars universe, it's obvious that the answer to almost every situation is battle for control of the space around something and then destroy whatever you need to from orbit. This makes ground battles almost extinct and ground battles are interesting from a storytelling perspective. It's a very similar situation to the real world and air superiority: assuming both sides have competent air forces, the real battle is going to be for control of the air because a fight against an opponent with air superiority is almost doomed from the start. There are exceptions to this rule of thumb but they are exceptions for a reason.
Star Wars doesnt do orbital bombardments.
Death Star "Hold my beer."
Honestly, it's a pretty straightforward fix in theory: orbital bombardments are rare because dumping a lot of very powerful plasma into an atmosphere would do no favors to the planet, leading to geomagnetic storms that would damage electronics and make communications difficult.
If the ship captain doesn't know how many shots will cause that, they aren't going to risk it, because damaging all the electronics on a planet is likely to cause more problems than bombardment would solve.
Dont forget the destruction of Kamino in TBB S 2 finale and ”the night of thousend knives” mentioned in Mando S 3.
Its also a cost thing that requires a lot more expences in live action I think. All those wxplososions and all that destruction has to be constructed on sets or in cgi.
Honestly saving Orbital Bombardments to make the moments where they are used more impactful seems like a good storytelling move.
_Of course_ the enemy has a shield in most cases.
A rag-tag rebel force having a Shield to block ISD and SSD from shelling their HQ? That is noteworthy.
The two major militaries in the clone wars? Luke's Jedi Temple? It would be notable if they _didn't_ have shields.
Most of the time they didnt. Serious shields (that can actually endure a siege from ISD) are part of planetary defence force on VERY rich worlds, having that power in the middle of nowhere is nonsense universe-wise.
'I would have glassed your entire PLANET'
#AskEck Would it be possible to create artificial force sensitivity? I know we things like the clones of Palpatine, perhaps Gideon in mando, ETC. But could a non-cloned being be made force sensitive? Maybe by injecting blood of someone with high M count, or transplanting a force sensetives bone marrow?
In the OT, no, as it was just a thing some people could do. In the PT, yes and no, because they introduced a biological component. Once they tied force sensitivity to a concentration of microscopic organism that exists separate from an individuals biology and exists in sentient and non sentient species across the galaxy, you can just hook someone up to a space dialysis machine and filter them critters out of the civilians and shoot em up into your well trained, loyal, disciplined commandos.
Midi-whatevers broke the worldbuilding of Star Wars completely.
Edit: Yes and no because you can artificially manipulate force sensitivity, but that isn't exactly artificial force sensitivity. It's natural sensitivity from the Midis, you just moved it from one person to another.
My favorite orbital strike was on Alderan.
Those fancies had it coming.
I always wonder now when orbital bombardments or base delta zeroes are depicted we see the shots raining down from areas that shouldn't have much if any turbolasers at all😅
Could do a mixture of both ground and orbital stikres, Like the Covenant
The geonosis non bombardment is the same reason no one orbitally bombards utapau there is no point it's all underground bar some minor assets on the surface.
the big thing about bombardment, is that if you ever utilize it, you have to then explain why ground invasions exist, whether that be doctrine or defenses.
Concerning the precision, there is even a quote, when Pellaeon in "Heirs to the Empire" offers this crazy clone Joruus C'Baoth a demonstration, that the guns of "Chimera" could bombard his tiny village without even a glancing hit to the nearby Mount Tantis.
According to JJ Abrams, the First Order didn't do it because they were worried they'd forget which way was up.
Star Wars doesn't understand alot of things 😭😭
Another point that I don't recall being made in the video is the issue of habitable worlds, we see alot in star wars but the risk of destroying a habitable world and biodiversity overall might be too big a risk for an ethical group to consider.
6 ISDs can slag the entire surface of a planet down to about 5 metres - The operation is called a "Base Delta Zero".
The thing that pisses me off is that we see nukes used against mandalore in the mandalorian flashbacks. If they have nukes, why even build the death star. Like you could eradicate all life on a planet with 1000 nukes and that would be WAY harder to stop. Even if you were hiding behind a shield, 1000 nukes would permanently render that planet uninhabitable
Because it would trivialize ground and aerospace battles to an extent. Controlling the orbitals gives you the ability to then strike anywhere and at any time with minimal chance of an adequate response.
You basically have to defend everything everywhere all at once.
To be fair, the first Star wars movie ever made featured a giant base which destroyed planets with one blast. That's basically an orbital bombardment on steroids
There is one thing that bugs me in sci-fi: The use of nuclear weapons in space battles.
In Season 2 of ST TNG the Enterprise is toe to toe with a Romulan Warbird. Shields and weapons keep going on and off line. In frustration Riker asks about getting rocks to throw at the Romulans.
At the speeds found in space kinetic energy alone would deliver more explosive force than even a hydrogen bomb of equal mass could deliver.
This would be perfect for ship to ship battles and would be even more effective if used on a planetary surface.
Star Wars is like anything where fans read into it, Death of the Author kicks in real fast. There’s a reason suspension of disbelief is used in fiction, and it works well enough that the property has a fan base despite not being realistic. The writers wanted something cool on screen, and they definitely got it (even if most problems in-universe could be solved pretty easily). Hard vs soft sci-fi and all that, Star Wars is fantasy set in space, not a science fiction Asimov work.
Could be that military leaders have gotten so used to planetary shields that the thought doesn't come up during battles. If you don't train for it, the average commander isn't going todo it.
#AskEck Hey Eck, I was wondering what your thoughts were on the Mandalorian Kandosii Dreadnought.