A World to Conquer

The following is a transcript of a guest lecture given by Rear Admiral Miikal Unther for the Fleet Tactics 241 class at the Duluur Sector Military Academy. Admiral Unther served as a Rear Admiral in the Imperial Navy for more than twenty years, and was a combat veteran who commanded the Imperial-class Star Destroyer Victory before his retirement. The son of wealthy parents, Unther was sent to the Academy as a way to settle him down. He used his father's position to get himself assigned aboard a Strike-class cruiser upon graduation. When he sacrificed his ship to save a larger vessel, he was promoted and given command of the Victory. When his father was arrested for suspected treason against the Empire, and later disappeared, his own renown in battle saved young Unther from any further investigation. After retiring, Admiral Unther became one of the premier instructors at naval training centers, such as the one located in the Duluur Sector. Unther had an in-depth knowledge of Imperial procedures for blockading and conquering a planet. The following is an insight into the mind of a tactical genius.

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A World to Conquer

"Quiet please. Thank you. Today we've invited a guest lecturer to discuss planetary assault tactics. Rear Admiral Unther is a 20-year veteran of the Imperial Navy whose last command was aboard the Imperial Star Destroyer Victory. Before you ask, yes, everything Admiral Unther discusses is possible test material. Remember that your reports on combined fleet and army coordination are due in only four days. We are a bit rushed today as maneuvers are scheduled to begin at 1530, so without further delay, Rear Admiral Unther."

"Thank you, Colonel Truvos. Planetary assaults are perhaps the most complex military maneuvers you will perform. They require complete integration between army and naval forces. They are delicate operations — failure to complete your objectives in time or in the proper way can lead to failure and most likely a court-martial. A planetary assault can be trying on troops, vessels and land vehicles, leaving your forces drained and unprepared for immediate action in another theater.

"There are four stages in a planetary assault. Success and your degree of success in each stage is crucial. These stages are approach, orbit, invasion and control. Yes, a question?"

"Sir, what about bombardment? Is there a stage for that?"

"Blasting a planet from orbit is easy — you don't need me to tell you how to do that. Limited orbital strikes would occur during the invasion stage. Just hope you are never given a Base Delta Zero order, lieutenant. Ah, yes, another question?"

"Sir, what's the Base Delta Zero order?"

"Base Delta Zero is the Imperial code order to destroy all population centers and resources, including industry, natural resources, and cities. All other Imperial codes are subject to change, as you well know, but this code is always the same to prevent any confusion when the order is given. Base Delta Zero is rarely issued. Any further questions? Good, let's continue ..."

Approach

"During approach, there are several things to consider. Your first decision concerns how close to your target planet you will exit hyperspace. Exiting very close allows you to surprise your enemy, but your fleet may not be fully prepared for battle for an hour or more while you deploy and maneuver. Emerging far from an enemy planet gives the enemy time to notice your approach through the system, but you can carefully reconnoiter the system before entering with little fear of detection.

"This decision was the first mistake to be made at the Battle of Hoth. You all received your briefing on that a few weeks ago? Good. I believe that battle serves as a textbook case of the perils and pitfalls of a planetary assault.

"Admiral Ozzel, believing the Rebels were unprepared to evacuate, felt that surprise would throw the Rebels into confusion. He brought the fleet out of hyperspace too close within the Hoth system. However, the Rebels were prepared with a planetary shield and significant hardware to resist an attack. This prevented recon units from scouting the system and a careful deployment of the fleet. To prevent any Rebels from escaping, the fleet was forced to maneuver quickly and without proper planning.

"When approaching your target choose your route carefully. Asteroid fields and gas giants are hiding places for enemy ships or even whole fleets. These danger areas should be carefully scanned and, if scans prove inconclusive, they should be lightly guarded through the entire operation. Even a few fighters can do significant damage to vulnerable ships kept in rear areas. Choose your route carefully — you can expect a planet to mobilize every ship available in its own defense and you need to make maximum use of planets and other objects to aid you in any battle.

"Remember, fighting a naval battle with a defending fleet will be different from fighting a pitched battle in space. The enemy will almost certainly target troop transports and logistics ships. Ordinarily, Star Destroyers are the first targets because of their fire-power and command coordination capabilities. Make certain you protect your supply ships and transports if you expect to lay siege to the planet. Sieges take time and time requires supplies. If you cannot repair your ships, or supply them with the thousand things they need to work, your siege will be short."

Orbit

"Once you have successfully navigated the system, you must gain control of the orbital space around your target. This may involve another naval battle or it may be far more complicated. When orbiting an enemy world there are two basic tactics: objective orbit and siege orbit.

"Un an objective orbit, you place the bulk of your fleet over a single objective, such as a capital or a starport. From here you can threaten key installations and be safe from raids by small groups of enemy ships. This orbit also allows you to control small but important areas. However, if a planet has several spaceports or several large cities, then a single objective orbit will not control enemy supply lines. Now, lieutenant, you could choose to bombard cities, space-ports and industrial facilities to reduce the number of objectives.

"A more risky alternative is the siege orbit. In this case you attempt to place ships all around the planet to prevent enemy vessels from leaving or entering. In this way you can reduce the logistical assets of an enemy if they need to import weapons, food, spare parts or other goods. You can also bombard enemy troops wherever they happen to concentrate.

"The weaknesses of a siege orbit were demonstrated at Hoth. Put up the holo view, please. As you can see here, Lord Vader's fleet was forced to quickly deploy to cover the entire surface of the planet. This was intended to prevent important Rebel leaders from escaping. This unusual situation required a siege orbit, as one ship can slip easily through an objective orbit.

"The weakness of the siege orbit in this situation was enhanced by the Rebels' lack of surprise and their use of a surprising amount of heavy firepower. In an ordinary siege their new ion cannon would have been of little use — the affected vessels are quick to recover from the damage — but when the Rebels' purpose is escape, it is an effective weapon.

"Coming out of hyperspace too close to the system forced the Star Destroyers to rush quickly to their assigned positions and they had little time to deploy proper fighter escort. Though some vessels had time to deploy fighters, many chose not to, sadly thinking that they so badly outclassed the Rebels on Hoth that there was no need for fighter support.

"As you can see here on the holo, when the first Rebel transport escaped there were still several vessels that had not even reached their assigned positions. Here you can see that the Victory-class Star Destroyer Firewind is far from its assigned position. These are the kinds of errors that can be expected when orders are hastily prepared and hastily executed."

Defense Tactics

"In order to understand attack, you must first understand defense. There are many strategies to defend a planet from attack, many of which you will never see because of the Empire's complete command of space. However, there are some clever defensive strategies that can be performed from the ground or with small units in space.

"Perhaps the most impressive ground defense is the Carigan defense, created by Governor Carigan on his home planet of Bryx before the rise of the Rebellion. Hundreds of ground-based guns were placed near important targets while submersible fighter carriers roamed beneath the seas. When a fleet arrived to deal with the situation, it met with stout resistance.

"At first a siege orbit was attempted in order to strike at the carriers wherever they emerged from under the waters. The carriers would surface all over the planet and send their fighters to strike TIE fighter patrols or escort ships. Any Imperial vessels that got close enough to strike the fighters when they descended into the atmosphere were fired on by the ground-based batteries. The fighters could often remain in range of the largest ground-based weapons during their attack, giving them long range fire support. Any attempt to pursue the fighters back into the atmosphere failed as the many guns destroyed enemy ships and fighters easily in the upper atmosphere.

"When the loss of escorts became too severe, the Imperial commander pulled his ships into an objective orbit over the capital. Now Carigan was free to receive supplies on the other side of the planet — isolated patrols that attempted to stop supply ships were easily picked off by the carriers' fighters. When it was learned that Carigan had been purchasing large, high-tech weapons from a nearby system and that some of them were already in place, it was clear that a quick attack was the only course to victory. Carigan was getting stronger, not weaker, and the Imperial fleet had already lost many ships.

"The fleet bombarded the capital and all the ground-based guns they could locate. Carigan had wisely hidden many guns and had avoided firing them through the course of the campaign — their locations remained secret until they began to fire on the Empire's dropships descending slowly through the atmosphere. Twenty-five thousand Imperial troops, including two regiments of stormtroopers, died in their dropships having never set foot on the surface.

"Once the landing was complete, neither side had much organization — the stormtroopers had lost too many dropships to continue with their original orders and orbital bombardment forced Carigan's men to remain dispersed. The conflict that ensued took three days and casualties were high on both sides. However, Carigan's men had the advantage. They fought on familiar terrain with the support of the population.

"Once the major urban centers were secured there was still resistance from the submersible carriers, one of which operated for three years after Bryx was conquered and was finally destroyed when forced to surface because of a faulty oxygen tank.

"You are not likely to encounter the Carigan defense today. It requires a great deal of equipment and time to prepare. Only a planetary governor who knows he and his planet are going to secede from the Empire years in advance will be capable of using this technique.

"You are far more likely to encounter a common tactic used by the Alliance called the space-snipe. In this defense, groups of fighters, usually X-wings, are placed in key hiding places around a system. Asteroid fields, gas giants, planets with large oceans or thick cloud cover all hide small fighter bases. These bases work in tandem to attack isolated ships, including supply ships jumping into the system. This can make a siege orbit very dangerous, again forcing you to move into an objective orbit for the safety found in numbers. It can also make extended operations difficult. The longer you stay, the more ships you will lose to quick raids.

"I fought against this defense at Gorbah while the Imperial Army tried to gain control of the planet. I lost two frigates, a cruiser and a full wing of fighters in the first two weeks. This was all from four hidden fighter bases where the largest vessel was a single B-wing. This forced an objective orbit that limited our ability to lend fire support to the Imperial Army troops on the surface. If troops were fighting too faraway from Gorbah's capital, we simply could not help them without moving the whole fleet. Small groups of ships deployed in siege orbit were just too vulnerable.

"The fight dragged on for three weeks. During this period I lost a squadron of fighters and the Moff lost four of his supply ships. Once the planet was captured, the enemy abandoned their bases and fled the system."

Invasion

"While you will not be responsible for ground invasions, it will be necessary for you to assist and understand them. The first and most useful task you can perform is battling a planetary shield. These devices can reach full strength in only a few minutes. They consume energy at very high rates and are expensive to leave on all the time. They are usually only turned on when hostile forces arrive. If you can destroy a planetary shield generator in the few minutes it takes to fully raise the shield itself, your mission and the army's mission will be far easier.

"Many planetary shields do not cover the entire surface — they protect only the important locations such as major cities or Rebel bases. When faced with a strong shield, your only option is to land troops outside the shield and proceed underneath it, without orbital strike support, and attack the shield generator. This was the only phase of the Battle of Hoth that succeeded. The leading AT-ATs arrived at the generator taking heavy losses only because of unorthodox Rebel snowspeeder tactics. Imperial AT-ATs successfully destroyed the generator on schedule, though many Rebel transports still escaped due to poor fleet organization in orbit.

"In addition to destroying planetary shields, you may be called upon to bombard a planet into submission. When bombarding you must carefully choose your targets. Remember that submission, not destruction, is your goal. When bombarding to cause fear in a population, local landmarks and buildings of cultural significance should be your first targets. These locations often produce no taxable revenue and their loss is a severe blow to local morale. Population centers should also be targeted. Without serious casual-ties among the populace, other attacks will only fuel their hatred for Imperial forces.

"Besides knowing what to destroy you should know what not to destroy. Hospitals should not be attacked — they allow the people to gauge the volume and severity of the casualties inflicted, helping undermine morale. Industrial facilities should not be attacked as they are difficult to rebuild and will reduce taxable income if lost. The capital's government buildings should not be attacked. If you destroy the government you will have no one to negotiate with for terms of surrender. The populace may begin to resent their own government if administrative buildings remain undamaged while population centers are being targeted.

"If an Imperial Army invasion is to follow the bombardment, and the objective is complete planetary domination, then you must concentrate on additional targets. Military and civilian leadership should be destroyed in order to confuse the enemy and allow you to set up your own government. Military industries need to be destroyed to prevent Rebels from resupplying if the siege is drags out. All military installations should also be targeted. Bombard all strategic resources, from food storage facilities to fuel dumps, to prevent resupply by the enemy.

"You must also clear safe landing zones. Be aware of what units are landing in certain locations. Don't turn a city to rubble if AT-ATs are going to try and move through it. Be careful what bridges and other transportation assets you destroy. AT-ATs can cross deep rivers as can repulsorcraft, but AT-STs and troops cannot. Remember that the Imperial Army must gain control of government buildings, media centers, starports and other control areas. Through control of these areas ground forces can control the population.

"Large concentrations of enemy troops can be destroyed by orbital strikes. You should assign as many smaller ships as possible to take fire support orders directly from ground units. If the fire support requests have to go through army headquarters, through naval headquarters and back to a small ship in position, it would take at least 20 minutes, far longer than many firefights. Army units must be able to call directly to naval vessels for orbital assistance. This is where many smaller ships are far more useful than a single Star Destroyer. A Star Destroyer can't be everywhere at once, 10 Carrack-class cruisers can."

Control

"The final and most important stage of a planetary assault is control. You can successfully maneuver, land and capture a planet and still be unable to control the planet. It is nearly impossible to transport sufficient troops across space to effectively fight and subdue every member of a population hundreds of millions strong. You must rule through fear, intimidation and the threat of destruction from orbit.

"First you must learn who you must control, Learn their customs, read their histories. This is an area of tactical study which is often forgotten today, but it can save you lives and equipment. Learn who you are fighting, then you can decide what type of propaganda is likely to work and the best method of delivering that propaganda. Make certain that all media is controlled by the Empire. Some forms of communication may actually be mass media, so make certain you can identify them. They are the vehicles for your propaganda.

"Blame acts of terrorism and military accidents on those who resist you. Blame the Rebels for causing famines and other hard-ships on a planet. After a victory bring food to the starving masses, saying that your victory has allowed food to be brought to them. Reward the population when you win and punish them should you lose. The population will quickly learn that their comfort depends on your success and they will no longer assist your enemies.

"Once Rebels lose popular support it is difficult for them to justify their suffering and the suffering of others caused by resistance. Volunteer armies can break up quickly when they can no longer justify their existence."

"Excuse me, Admiral Unther, that is all the time we have for today. The naval maneuvers are about to begin, so we will adjourn for the rest of the class to the observation deck."

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The above lecture has been transcribed from the Star Wars Adventure Journal, Number 2, by Peter Schweighofer (Ed.), copyright May 1994, from West End Games