Clone Wars questions

[Tvtyrant]

I watched the movies and cartoon but I'm no where near as big into SW as some people, so I thought I would ask here.

1. How big are the actual forces in the Clone Wars (the conflict not the cartoon.) Both sides can factory make their troops but the numbers given in the movies are tiny. 250K troops isn't enough to invade a continent much less a space empire.

2. How many planets were actively working for each side as opposed to shrugging and watching?

3. How many actual Jedi were there? Are the Jedi's generals because of their precognition or just being experienced troops?

[Palanan]

1. I don’t think that was ever specified in the movies or series. Various figures show up in companion volumes and articles, usually running into several million. The Clone Wars series seemed to imply that clone production was constant throughout the conflict, and I don’t know if the issue of shutting down clone production was ever addressed.

2. I don’t recall hearing any figures on this, although there are probably different estimates scattered throughout the old EU, especially the novels. I vaguely recall a line about several thousand neutral systems, and given the immense number of species and worlds in the Star Wars galaxy, figures ranging from the thousands to the hundreds of thousands could be plausible.

3. The number of Jedi prior to Order 66 is given at around 10,000, based on a quote from Star Wars Rebels.

As for why the Jedi were serving as generals…there were some machinations involved in the creation of the clone army, which were touched on in the prequel movies and further explained in the Clone Wars series. Palpatine manipulated all aspects of the conflict, including the original order for clone soldiers, which was ostensibly made on behalf of the Jedi but without their actual knowledge.

Once the first installment of the clone army was ready for action, Yoda made the decision to bring them to Geonosis to fight Dooku’s forces. After that, the Jedi seem to have fallen into the role of battlefield commanders, despite Mace Windu’s earlier claim that the Jedi couldn’t fight a war for the Chancellor.

It’s been years since I’ve watched the earlier seasons of Clone Wars, so I don’t recall the exact logic for why the Jedi became the commanders, although given the lack of a standing military they may have been the only real option. And of course, Palpatine wanted the Jedi commanding the clones and overwhelmed with fighting the war, in order for them to be ground down, isolated and vulnerable.

This is all off-the-cuff, so I’m sure someone else will come along and fill in some of the missing bits.

[Dire_Flumph]

1. No solid numbers, Lama Su states that 200K "units" are ready at that time with more on the way. 200,000 troops is comically low to run a galactic scale war, but he says units, and we have no idea what a unit is. Just assume the number is as big as needed.

2. Again, no real numbers. Planets can be added to either side as the story demands, assumption is that the numbers are equivalent enough not to make the war one sided. Any number they gave would probably not hold up to scrutiny, so it's a good thing exact sizes are handwaved.

3. There have been numbers given on this, the number of Jedi during the clone wars has varied, but I believe it's always in the low 5 digits (tens of thousands). But it's not clear how many of those acted as generals in the war. I don't think we are ever shown more than 20-30 recurring faces acting as generals, so we don't know that all Jedi acted in that capacity. I assume Jedi were made generals due to experience as peacekeepers, they probably were able to commandeer local security before the war as needed to handle pirate threats, etc. We are shown a non-clone officer corps of commanders as well, possibly pulled from previously existing security forces.

[Mando Knight]

The numbers are intentionally undefined: are the first 200000 "units" (with a million more well on the way) individual clones, or do they represent fire teams, platoons, or even a battalion? The answer is "do you want the mathematics of total galactic warfare to blot out the swashbuckling romance of a space opera or not?" The numbers that have been given and conjectured have varied from approximately just 3 million clones at the height of the war to over a trillion across a million worlds in conflict, with the Separatists' droid armies generally significantly outnumbering them. The Jedi are universally fewer in number, with mere thousands at the start of the war and losing hundreds through attrition until its end.

As for why the Jedi are generals, the entire thing is an elaborate plot orchestrated by Palpatine in order to subvert the Republic into the tyrannical Empire, and at the same time exact the revenge of the Sith on the Jedi Order that would otherwise oppose him. The Jedi are generals because they barely needed more than a nudge to assume the role of "Heroes of the Galaxy" and leap headlong into a massive war secretly designed specifically to isolate and exterminate them.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Mando Knight
The Jedi are generals because they barely needed more than a nudge to assume the role of "Heroes of the Galaxy" and leap headlong into a massive war secretly designed specifically to isolate and exterminate them.

Are we ever shown the moment when the Jedi Council gets together and decides they'll assume tactical command of the Grand Army?

In Attack of the Clones, we have the battle of Geonosis, which is essentially Yoda bringing the cavalry to the rescue, but that's the first time clone troopers are used in battle and Yoda seems to be the only Jedi giving orders. By the time Revenge of the Sith begins, the assumption is baked in that the Jedi are leading clones into battle, and I don't recall that the issue of whether they should ever comes up.

So the Council's decision probably happened soon after the battle on Geonosis, but has that ever appeared in narrative? Do we know exactly how that was debated and decided?

[Mechalich]

1. This is a matter of immense controversy and arguments about Clone numbers go around and around in circles forever. Nobody can agree whatsoever. Some authors have tried to establish 3 million clones as an actual number, but this is so obviously ridiculous its faced immense pushback from other sources. In Legends it was well-established that while the Clones and the Droids Armies were the most famous forces deployed by each side, much of the conflict was fought by far more conventional planetary defense forces pressed into service.

2. With regard to planetary participation its important to recognize that planets in Star Wars have staggering economic inequality of many orders of magnitude. They also have massive inequalities of population, Coruscant has a population of over 1 trillion, while planets like Tatooine have only a few million inhabitants. The result of this is that the overwhelming majority of the star systems in the galaxy have no strategic significance, economically or otherwise. There are a few exceptions, like Ryloth, which is important because it's the Twi'lek homeworld and Twi'lek's are the galaxy's second most populous species and an important spice source. So only a small number of worlds are actually worth fighting over, usually because they provide essential resources or weapons production.

The Essential Atlas grouped planets into three basic groups, based on their importance to the Empire: full member worlds (1.75 million), represented worlds (69 million) and the unimportant rest (1 billion). As you can see, the number of consequential planets is small.

3. A number of sources give the Jedi Order, at the start of the Clone Wars, 10,000 'Knights and Masters.' Critically, this is not the entirety of the Jedi Order. It leaves out all Padawans (probably a couple thousand), Initiates (likewise), and members of the Jedi Service Corps (potentially more numerous than knights and masters, but principally noncombatants).

Regarding the Jedi as Generals, this is a bit complex, but it is fairly easy to unpack. First, the post-Ruusan Old Republic did not have an army, of any kind, and was in fact legally prohibited from possessing one until Palpatine passed the Military Creation Act to form the Grand Army of the Republic (this happens during AotC and is therefore part of both versions of canon). The Republic did, however, have a pan-galactic law enforcement arm called the Judicial Department (the pair of officers piloting Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan's ship in TPM are Judicial Officers), and the Jedi Order utilized its authority under the aegis of the Judicial Department. The Military Creation Act folded the Judicials into the GAR, including the Jedi Order, and since the Jedi were already the senior field operatives in the Judicial Department it was natural that they be given command ranks in the army. Also, placing the newly created army under the authority of the Jedi - who were trusted by the galactic elite, though importantly, not by the galactic masses - made the bill much easier to pass. Of course this played into Palpatine's hands.

The Jedi Order could have refused to serve as officers in the GAR, but if doing so would have required them to break away from their operations as a taxpayer-supported quasi-government entity and survive on their own, probably off Coruscant. In Legends, the Jedi Order took a similar stance at points in the past, refusing to directly affiliate itself with a militarized Republic. However, the Order of the PT period was unwilling to take such steps. Honestly, that was the right move anyway, because if they hadn't Palpatine could have simply sabotaged the Republic's response and arranged for the Separatists to conquer the galaxy anyway.

[hamishspence]

Some authors have tried to establish 3 million clones as an actual number, but this is so obviously ridiculous its faced immense pushback from other sources.

From the fanbase, certainly. I don't know about there being any officially written Lucasfilm sources that "pushed back", though after the replacing of "Legends" with "Newcanon" it would have been a good opportunity to do so.

Still, the movie novelisations all got shunted into Legends, and new movie novelisations started coming out. Maybe when AOTC gets an official newcanon novelisation, the lines that portrayed "units" as "individual clones" will be gone completely, and replaced with something that suggests units are much larger.

[Mechalich]

From the fanbase, certainly. I don't know about there being any officially written Lucasfilm sources that "pushed back"

While no one was willing to come out and directly say that there were actually hundreds of millions of clones or anything like that, many sources later in Legends, including TCW itself, used clones everywhere and made it very clear that 3 million wasn't possibly enough. TCW also includes the passage of a bill where the Republic purchases more clones. Since that was not necessarily a one-off event, they could easily have continually upped the number of clones in the GAR throughout the course of the war.

[hamishspence]

While no one was willing to come out and directly say that there were actually hundreds of millions of clones or anything like that, many sources later in Legends, including TCW itself, used clones everywhere and made it very clear that 3 million wasn't possibly enough. TCW also includes the passage of a bill where the Republic purchases more clones. Since that was not necessarily a one-off event, they could easily have continually upped the number of clones in the GAR throughout the course of the war.

"Continuously upping the number of clones" could have taken it from 1.2 million (start of war) to 3 million (end of war) - but I'd agree that both making "units" much bigger, and dropping the 3 million figure from Legends entirely, allows Newcanon a distinct advantage over Legends when it comes to allowing a big clone army without directly contradicting other Newcanon sources.

The problem with "purchasing more clones" is the 10 year growth cycle.

Unless Kamino already has been growing vast numbers of clones for free for years in the hope that they will be bought, none of the clones added to the roster as a result of the passing of that bill, will see battle, being far too young.

[Mechalich]

The problem with "purchasing more clones" is the 10 year growth cycle.

Unless Kamino already has been growing vast numbers of clones for free for years in the hope that they will be bought, none of the clones added to the roster as a result of the passing of that bill, will see battle, being far too young.

We actually know that Kamino has been growing vast numbers of extra clones for years because Obi-Wan sees a large number of underage clones during his tour of the production line on Kamino. Palpatine was always planning (and bankrolling) far more than the initial order.

[hamishspence]

Palpatine was always planning (and bankrolling) far more than the initial order.

I thought all of those were part of the initial order - with it being "grow 1.2 million units in the first batch, then keep starting batches every few (Days? Weeks? Months?) for the next 10 years"

That the Kaminoans had been paid for "10 full years of maximum-capacity batch production".

And that the TCW episode with the funding new batches thing, is just that - a bill to authorise the Kaminoans to start production of a completely separate batch, outside of that initial 10 year order.

Given that in the newcanon, production of clones appeared to stop completely after the war, with there being few left in Imperial service - suggests to me that, regardless of that bill, Palpatine didn't actually choose to keep on producing clones into the OT era.

We actually know that Kamino has been growing vast numbers of extra clones for years because Obi-Wan sees a large number of underage clones during his tour of the production line on Kamino.

I would speculate that most of the clones still in Imperial service in OT-era books, were those very "baby clones" that Obi-Wan saw.

[Lord Vukodlak]

From what I've manged to piece together, the bulk of the fighting was actually done by local defense forces. The Clones were reserved for major operations or for strategic outposts. Since Starwars even the animated TV series only focuses on the major events the clone presence is exaggerated. Still it would have numbered upwards of 7 million.


Now the Clone Army was abandoned for several reasons, they were expensive a massive cloned army like the one used by the Republic wouldn't work for the Empire's plan to occupy the galaxy. Second they aged twice as fast. The Battle of Yavin was 19 years after the end of the Clone Wars. So biologically speaking someone like Rex was 64. They were useful for a war lasting a few years but they weren't the answer to galactic occupation. You also had issues of biological weapons when Palapatine controlled both sides in the war preventing a biological weapon that targeted only clones was simple.

Regarding the Jedi as Generals, this is a bit complex, but it is fairly easy to unpack. First, the post-Ruusan Old Republic did not have an army, of any kind, and was in fact legally prohibited from possessing one until Palpatine passed the Military Creation Act to form the Grand Army of the Republic (this happens during AotC and is therefore part of both versions of canon). The Republic did, however, have a pan-galactic law enforcement arm called the Judicial Department (the pair of officers piloting Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan's ship in TPM are Judicial Officers), and the Jedi Order utilized its authority under the aegis of the Judicial Department. The Military Creation Act folded the Judicials into the GAR, including the Jedi Order, and since the Jedi were already the senior field operatives in the Judicial Department it was natural that they be given command ranks in the army. Also, placing the newly created army under the authority of the Jedi - who were trusted by the galactic elite, though importantly, not by the galactic masses - made the bill much easier to pass. Of course this played into Palpatine's hands.

Furthermore very few people both studied military history and tactics those who did tended to be historians not trained fighters.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Mechalich
The Military Creation Act folded the Judicials into the GAR, including the Jedi Order, and since the Jedi were already the senior field operatives in the Judicial Department it was natural that they be given command ranks in the army.

This is a key detail that I’ve never seen before. Where did you find this?

Originally Posted by Mechalich
With regard to planetary participation its important to recognize that planets in Star Wars have staggering economic inequality of many orders of magnitude. They also have massive inequalities of population….

Given this, it also seems that only a tiny fraction of planets are represented in the Senate. Are there any sources that explain which planets gain the privilege of a delegation in the Senate chambers? Naboo would seem to be as tiny and inconsequential as millions of others, and yet they have a Senate presence.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Given this, it also seems that only a tiny fraction of planets are represented in the Senate. Are there any sources that explain which planets gain the privilege of a delegation in the Senate chambers? Naboo would seem to be as tiny and inconsequential as millions of others, and yet they have a Senate presence.

Naboo was a populous world of 4.5 billion on the midrim and an important trade stop between the core worlds and the outer-rim.

At times a senator would represent a sector rather then a planet. As the planets their in were less populated. And the mega corporations could have their own representatives.
So thereÂ’s probably a population number somewhere.

[Tvtyrant]

Going by numbers I found on different wikis:

1. The Empire has 25,000 Imperial Star Destroyers, with crews of 5k each for 120,000,000 crew men for midclass ships. Granted the Empire is more militant than the Republic, but also not in the middle of a massive Civil War. So I would guess 120,000,000 clones is a good lower bound.

2. The clones are outnumbered roughly 10/1 by the droids, so lower droid bounds is probably a few billion.

3. Assuming there are 100 space ships in operation per habitable planet on average, and the average crew size is 10, there are at least a trillion people in space. Given modern pacification numbers of 1/50, there needs to be 20 billion clones and 200 billion droids (super rough upper bound.)

So a unit is roughly 600 to 100,000 in size.

[Sapphire Guard]

A thing people miss about invasion fleets is that the warships are generally there to escort/screen the transport ships, rather than carry troops themselves (obviously, exceptions exist)

Star Wars doesn't seem to do that, like a lot of fiction, but if it does, we don't have to limit forces to the capacity of the warships.

Possibly they can't transport many clones, so they just supplement the locals for the most part. But that doesn't track very well with what we see.

[Mechalich]

Given this, it also seems that only a tiny fraction of planets are represented in the Senate. Are there any sources that explain which planets gain the privilege of a delegation in the Senate chambers? Naboo would seem to be as tiny and inconsequential as millions of others, and yet they have a Senate presence.

The Essential Atlas goes into this in some detail. The Atlas goes into a lot of things in detail and is, IMO, the single best source with regard to getting a good idea of how the Star Wars galaxy actually functions. It is a Legends source, but much of the general thrust of its thesis has been preserved in the new canon anyway.

With regard to Senate representation, in the Old Republic Senate most Senators were supposed to represent a sector or subsector region, which might include thousands of inhabited systems. However, the Senate preserved seats for the representatives of individual worlds that were considered to be of historical importance - usually worlds in the Core. Bail Organa of Alderaan, for example, represents Alderaan by itself, because despite it being an idyllic pastoral world of no economic significance its one of the founding Core Worlds and has massive cultural cachet among the galactic population (when Tarkin destroyed Alderaan, he was making a cultural statement of immense import, as if tearing down every monument to the Old Republic at once).

Naboo actually, is a world of considerable economic importance. Naboo plasma - the glow-y blue stuff that powers all the Gungan Army tech in TPM - is important to energy production and therefore Naboo actually sources power to tens of thousands of planets (the Legends novel Darth Plagueis goes into this further).

1. The Empire has 25,000 Imperial Star Destroyers, with crews of 5k each for 120,000,000 crew men for midclass ships. Granted the Empire is more militant than the Republic, but also not in the middle of a massive Civil War. So I would guess 120,000,000 clones is a good lower bound.

The crew complement of an Imperial Star Destroyer is actually 37,085 persons, 9,235 officers and 27,850 enlisted. Each such vessel also carried 9,700 stormtroopers aboard. So the actual fleet complement for just the Star Destroyers, is 1.17 billion. And of course the Empire had both hundreds of larger vessels (the crew of the Executor is over 300,000) and hundreds of thousands of smaller ones, plus space station, shipyard, logistical, and other personnel. A rough estimate for its total personnel complement might be around 5 billion. That sounds like a big number but, it's not even 1% of the population of Coruscant alone. A modest draft would have allowed the Empire to supply its entire naval complement from just the capital planet.

Now the Clone Army was abandoned for several reasons, they were expensive a massive cloned army like the one used by the Republic wouldn't work for the Empire's plan to occupy the galaxy. Second they aged twice as fast. The Battle of Yavin was 19 years after the end of the Clone Wars. So biologically speaking someone like Rex was 64.

The Legends reasoning is more straightforward: the Kaminoans rebelled against the Empire using new batches of clones loyal to themselves rather than continue to exist as little more than an Imperial factory (one that was not properly compensated due to the Empire's anti-alien bias). The Empire responded by crushing them and moved to source Stormtroopers via recruitment thereafter. The new canon has yet to detail why Palpatine moved away from the clones, but a general distrust of the Kaminoans is likely.

[Tvtyrant]

The crew complement of an Imperial Star Destroyer is actually 37,085 persons, 9,235 officers and 27,850 enlisted. Each such vessel also carried 9,700 stormtroopers aboard. So the actual fleet complement for just the Star Destroyers, is 1.17 billion. And of course the Empire had both hundreds of larger vessels (the crew of the Executor is over 300,000) and hundreds of thousands of smaller ones, plus space station, shipyard, logistical, and other personnel. A rough estimate for its total personnel complement might be around 5 billion. That sounds like a big number but, it's not even 1% of the population of Coruscant alone. A modest draft would have allowed the Empire to supply its entire naval complement from just the capital planet.

I mean, sure it's small compared to the capital. The largest army in the world now is 1/14 the size of the largest urban population, and they aren't stationed on ships. The ships are the big bottleneck, without portals or teleporters you can only ship relatively small numbers. That was the reason the B-1s were used, you could stack 100 times or more the number of them in a ship or transport than humanoids.