Systems, Not Sith: How Inter-service Rivalries Doomed the Galactic Empire

[the_gneech]

From the wrinkly brains at Overthinking It: Systems, Not Sith: How Inter-service Rivalries Doomed the Galactic Empire

The Death Star is the apotheosis of the Imperial Navy’s drive for dominance of the Imperial Military, and the Imperial Navy’s single-mindedness about their “Technological Terror” is evident throughout the series. With it, they guarantee that an Admiral will always be at the helm of the “ultimate power” in the universe. Despite the Army’s (accurate) objections that the station is vulnerable, the Navy convinces the Emperor to build not one but TWO different battle stations that can be destroyed by a small fighter shooting a single shot.

The Navy’s fixation is almost pathological—when Leia gives up the supposed location of the Rebels on Dantooine, the logical next step would be to go to Dantooine and blow up the Rebels. If Leia is lying, they can always come back to Alderaan and threaten to blow it up again. To Tarkin and the pro-Death Star faction, however, demonstrating the “full power of this station” is the most important objective of all. Dantooine is “too remote to make an effective demonstration,” so they blow up Alderaan and lose whatever leverage they might have over Leia.

...

It’s not surprising that Storm Troopers never hit anything – their blasters are made by whichever contractor has the most political clout with the Imperial Command. If that contractor turns out a lot of defective blasters, the General who selected him certainly isn’t going to be the one to report the news to the Emperor and it’s not like the Storm Troopers are going to complain to Darth Vader or ask "60 Parsecs" to do an independent investigation.

-The Gneech

Comments

[anthony-lion.livejournal.com]

Actually, if the blasters was the problem, another officer would be bound to report it,for two reasons:

1. Backstabbing a competitor is a timehonoured way of improving your own standing...
2. Fear that Darth Vader might hear about it from other sources and begin to wonder why you didn't report it.

The sorry fact is that they're using Russian WWII tactics; flooding the enemy with superior numbers and giving a rats @ss about losses as long as they gt results. (The Russians even used 'penal battalions' that attacked completely without weapons. )
Also, their helmets doesn't allow for much of a field of view, and the rest of the uniform makes it difficult to hold a weapon in a proper position for marksmanship shooting.
The suit seems more like it's built to protect against stabbing and improvised striking weapons(table legs, chairs, bottles, rocks) such as what is used by an angry mob. In other words, it's Riot Gear, not battle armor.
It also has built-in air reserves, which really comes in handy when gassing a riot...
(The reserves seems to be too small for searching through a large rebellion stronghold that has been flooded with poison gas.)

[carlhh.livejournal.com]

Palpatine was big on psychological warfare. The Super Star Destroyer is way bigger than a command ship needs to be, because it's not meant to "just" be command ship. It's real job is to park over an uppity planet and scare the bantha pudu out of the rabble-rousers below without firing a shot.

AT-AT walkers are another example. Really unstable and, despite the argument magnetic anomalies can mess with repulsorlift vehicles, not that great on broken terrain. But intimidating as hell to infantry.