Why Star Wars Ground Battles Make No Sense 

Drinking and playing Minecraft tonight (lol) at 9pm EST: ru-vid.com Thumbnail art: www.artstation.com/artwork/KRzJo

"I payed for the whole army I'm going to use the whole army"

"We're just ground battles, we're meant to make sense" "Not to me"

As generals during the Iraq war said. "You can drop as many bombs as you'd like. Shell them with artillery. But they'll somehow survive in pockets. That's where my marines come in."

*"made for children"* "Master skywalker. There are too many of them, what are we going to do?"

Oh my guy, orbital bombardment isn’t the issue. The issue is the standing completely out in the open and charges akin to those of ww1

The mission isn't always just to destroy as many enemies and their stuff as possible regardless of fallout. A lot of times they are trying to recover intel, property, capture prisoners, and/or rescue prisoners. It's also hard to confirm whether you killed a VIP, destroyed valuable intel, or accidentally killed your own captured soldiers if you just bombed the crap out of everything. And many battles happen on inhabited planets with innocent people nearby on top of that.

I just tend to assume that unless stated otherwise, all planets have some form of planetary shield, even if it's not mentioned. For example, we know that Geonosis had planetary shields, because a major plot point in Rebels was the team recovering the core from one of them.

this is the same problem with modern air force: you cant win without ground forces to support, it doesnt matter how advanced your air force is

Grievous just wanted Ventress’s lightsaber .

Space: The Ultimate High Ground

Well the empire couldn't cause they had to maintain a good image, remember they tried to constantly act as the good guys, and tried to pass off the Rebel alliance as just terrorists. Also the Republic could not as it might cause the senate to loose faith in them, as orbital bombing is super cruel. The CIS was being manuplated by palps, so their main purpose wasn't just pure domination by eradication, but instead to create conflict, and what better way to create conflict by holding ground battles rather than just destroying planets.

Eckharts: Ground battles don't make sense! Death Star: Thats... why I'm here

"God fights on the side with the best artillery. " -Napoleon Bonaparte

Clone wars: is made for children Also clone wars: Has some of the most gruesome deaths.

I was expecting a bit of commentary on the way a lot of clone troopers didn't take cover. A lot of battles in clone wars had the look of like a civil war fusillade as lines of troops exchanged fire standing right across from one another.

May have been said already Palpatine wanted the Jedi Temple intact so he could raid the archives and the vaults, destroying it would have been a waste

Hears "maybe shouldn't bomb the crap out of the civilians" *Laughs in Warhammer 40K*

Star Wars: "What do you think about complete planetary annihilation?" WarHammer 40K: "Yes"

There is another very important reason why they didn't use air superiority and orbital bombardment, and didn't just destroy the droid factories from orbit at Geonosis. (the same for the rest of the Clone War, actually) Because both sides of the conflict were secretly controlled by the same guy! He wanted a drawn out conflict to further his own plans, so a quick and easy victory was not his goal. He wanted both sides to exhaust each other, so that he can more easily take over after the war.

Geonosis was a proving ground for the clone army, heavy equipment and tactics. Bombardment would have been more efficient however it appears the goal was to battle-harden the initial wave of clone troopers to develop their level of experience. The siege on Umbara was the best Clone Wars operation in the series. Why didn’t they develop the Republic Commando unit rather than the Bad Batch team. The RCs are much more interesting.

Me here in Germany wants to going to bed Eck: Oh I dont Think so

Finn: Eckhartsladder don’t worry.........THEY’LL USE THE FORCE!

"Is there a reason besides aesthetics and drama for ground invasion instead of orbital bombardment?" 2, actually. While the crews of Thrawn and Pallaeon were capable of precision bombardment, there are references that orbital strikes were not known for accuracy (one such instance is where C'baoth makes a comment about that in HttE), making the destruction of large areas possible, but also leaving many survivors that can then retreat into hiding unless you saturate the area (and cause potentially unwanted collateral damage. Even so, ensuring there were no survivors would be a difficult task in the aftermath). A ground invasion is able to cut off access to paths to retreat and ensure the enemy is completely wiped out (not that the Empire is ever presented as being very good at this -we need more instances of the Empire being an actual capable entity in its position as "the big bad"). Also, bear in mind, while numerous, the number of Star Destroyers was indeed limited -being a Star Destroyer captain was a mark of prestige. We don't often see bombardment (with accuracy) depicted on anything smaller than an Imperial Star Destroyer., and most ships in a standard fleet were other designs. So ground invasions were more useful in ensuring the complete destruction of the target (without destroying everything else nearby), and in ensuring the capture/elimination of the enemies on the ground. ...whether they were run practically and competently is another issue (in general the Empire was impractical, incompetent and inefficient).

I just assumed the advanced battle tech in Star Wars has some kind of “Minovsky Effect” similar to the mobile suit Gundam universe. Basically anything that uses advanced energy fusion produces super particles that expand into the surrounding atmosphere and interferes with communications, targeting, and long-range combat, making close-range combat unavoidable where precession is important. Figured that’s why usually only the most brilliant or ruthless tacticians in Star Wars could pull off a long-range bombardment successfully.

After World War 1 and the introduction of aerial combat, there were some military commanders who predicted that all future large-scale warfare would be conducted through long-range bombing raids, and that the age of infantry was over, today some nations have the technological ability to strike anywhere on the face of the planet with ICBMs and cruise missiles, and yet the use of infantry remains a persistent part of warfare. The objective of warfare isn't to simply destroy your opponent, if it was all modern warfare would be conducted with nuclear weapons as a first resort, which is also a factor against the use of orbital bombardment. Despite the proliferation of not only nuclear weapons, but unspeakably deadly biological weapons, we don't (often) see their use due to the principle of mutually assured destruction, which is essentially a gentleman's agreement that the potential consequences of both sides using such weapons far outweigh any possible benefits. The objective of most international warfare is to either capture and hold territory, or to defend your own territory against an enemy force trying to the same thing, and the only way that you can do that is with boots on the ground. No matter how much you bomb a location into submission, if you don't capture and hold it, the enemy will always be able to return -even to a pile of ashes- and plant their flag on top of the ruins. And if you sufficiently bomb a location into such a degree of desolation that the enemy have no desire to return, then you too have no use for that location either. You may consider that this is a viable tactic for purely military targets, but generally speaking military targets are very rarely in complete isolation, but more often nearby cities, ports, factories or other such civilian areas. I understand that you are very knowledgeable about Star Wars, but it would seem to me that you have a typical civilian understanding of warfare and the motivations behind large scale combat, such things are incredibly complex and nuanced. But then I guess we are also talking about science fiction here.

*has multiple murder and decapitation scenes* “Show for children”

This logic is what congress had about the middle east and boy were they wrong.

I'm guessing anti ship weapons, but they just forgot to show a bit more attention to detail. Ships that come into range can easily be bombarded back and ground based weapons isn't as limited by weight, bulk or power as a ship based weapon would be and can be hidden anywhere, in a mountain, under the city, a tiny hole in the middle of a desert, etc...

I'm surprised that Thrawn's bombardment of Atallon wasn't mentioned. Also, straight up bombing the temple would have generated sympathy for the Jedi by making them casualties of the war.

Think about it, why would you go into a battle over a planet and its resources, just to obliterate all of it to collect the skeleton of the world after? We fight for ideology, pride, but most importantly resources.

If what's in the shows and movies are cannon, then I suppose that their weapons are simply far too inaccurate to destroy targets without demolishing everything on the same hemisphere.

"Ozzel exits hyperspace too close so the Rebels are able to raise shields" always sounds like Vader's excuse to the Emperor. After all if the Imperial forces dropped further away... Rebels would have even more time. The Empire knew the droid vanished, so Rebels are alerted, evacuation prep was underway already, so jumping in close and establishing blockade ASAP was far more useful than trying to sneak from afar (esp. as a sensible Rebel thing to do would be to maintain patrols out there)...

"Am I wrong to think Palpatine should have just ordered the CIS to blow up the Jedi Temple?" Well, he probably didn't want the galaxy's last memory of the Jedi to be their going out heroically as martyrs. Also, his ultimate seizure of power was supposed to be justified by a Jedi insurrection. That's probably a lot easier to swallow if the Jedi are still a galaxy spanning order than if it's "the Jedi. The Jedi... Wait, you mean those three guys? Didn't they used to have a temple or something?"

Dathomir, grievous just likes the thrill of the fight let’s be honest

Well you brought up a good point about planetary shields but also sometimes militaries want to take control of a base or strong hold, or gather intelligence about future planned tactics or other base locations. That's not very effective if the base or strong hold has been completely destroyed.

I really love that channels like yours exist. I'm glad I'm not the only person who over thinks the lore of sci Fi universes

Maybe the attacker wants to avoid damaging the settlements or sometimes the ecosystems on the ground. And in the first battle of geonosis, the hives of the bugs probably are integrated with their factories, and a bombardment on the factories would likely kill the bugs as well, something the republic senate would have considered as a massacre of civilians and a war crime

Palpatine would probably have known about the Sith artifacts kept in/under the Jedi temple. I doubt he would have risked their destruction.

I'm sure that Palpatine would've really liked to give the Jedi Temple an "accident", but there're also a ton of things he'd like to collect from there too.

For a lot of battles the capital ships were constantly being fired upon by other capital ships or fighters, keeping them occupied. Also it is possible that this could kill civilians in the process so it is technically a war-crime so it is morally corrupt too.

Having the CIS bomb the Jedi temple would have garnered public sympathy for the Jedi. The opposite effect of what Palpatine was trying to do to them.

Starwars: *has ground battles* Eckhart: *It’s treason then.*

The last battle of Ruusan is also an good example. The Sith had total control of the planet's atmosphere, and nevertheless they made a dangerous force ritual to set the forest on fire in which the Jedi were hidden, instead of bombing the shit out of them.

I'm waiting for a star wars version of the Geneva convention to get released and see if orbital bombardment is a war crime or not. Besides that it hasn't stopped the republic from commiting a few war crimes themselves

Meanwhile in Warhammer... "Sir, somebody appears to be flipping us off on the ground!" *"Prepare the fleet! Burn this heresy!"*

they make no sense because thousands of years ago, some General drank the stupid juice, and that trait been passed down

Nice video, I want to offer some of my insight in this topic. If I may... As the Empire, orbital bombardment pose 2 main issues: First, most times was a not very propaganda friendly technique. Bombarding planet capitals with enough army to seriously engage your forces is not a very good idea. We can take as a quick example the US decision in WWII not to select the Japanese imperial palace as a target for atomic attacks. Since they knew that possibly then Japan would not surrender and would fight to the death. And this is just one example of many in history. Which can happen on planets that openly oppose the empire and are defending their independence. That is why the empire performs more "manual" tactics like those briefly seen in SOLO to subdue planets. Second. The rebellion was a serious threat to the empire (duh). His organization was extraordinarily effective against unsuspecting Imperial officials. In fact in legends there is a short series of comics that talks about this "orbital bombardment tactic". Whenever Imperial fleets found a base or nucleus of what they called "dissidents," they bombed it. Without contemplation and to the foundations. Then they would send a couple of squads to see if there was anything left worthwhile. Virtually none of the rebel bases had access to shields. Only the most important ones that we can see in the movies. And this was done CONSTANTLY. This of course did not stop the appearance of more numerous and new rebel cells. They realized then that in reality they did not know anything about these dissidents and it became a priority to take prisoners and capture data. Especially as attacks on vital Imperial targets, desertions, and spies among Imperial ranks were becoming more frequent. So many officers seeking promotion and merit began to carry out costly invasions and ground attacks in search of this information. This was a small step in changing tactics. That it was not widely accepted in the Imperial leadership and was considered by many to be an unnecessary and ridiculous waste of resources. But this was joined by another factor. Possibly what caused orbital bombardment to take a backseat as a primary tactic. Many of the gunners tasked with carrying out these bombing raids dealt with severe regret and depression. Since ending thousands of lives by pressing 4 buttons, continuously, takes its toll on anyone with a minimum of conscience. Some of these artillerymen renounced the empire and indirectly joined the rebellion as independent agents hindering the imperial command. The comics talk about one of them. When it was intended to leave survivors, lighter imperial bombardments were made, which then allowed ground troops to attack without much resistance. This gunner always carried out bombing runs at full power, ensuring that no survivors were ever found. Thanks to him, many high-ranking Imperial officers were punished for incompetence or directly executed by Darth Vader, when he was around. For it was becoming more and more urgent to get Intel of the rising tide of anti-imperial sentiment. The empire was forced to open an investigation to find out why their bombings left no survivors. That even, as I have anticipated, involved Darth Vader who smelled something suspicious. Although in the end he finds the anti-imperial agent. In conclusion, the insubordination of Imperial personnel regarding this tactic, the impact on Imperial troop morale, Rebel activists publicly protesting the morality of the strategy, the need for Rebel data and prisoners, and pressure from COMPNOR to avoid promoting nationalist ideas and a "revenge" or "fight to the death" mentality. They made it an option that little by little was replaced by a good ground strategy. Or as support for ground units along with fighter squadrons. Thanks for your time and attention.

There's a amazing example of this in star wars rebels... Grand Admiral Thrawn engaged the rebel cell Phoenix Squadron on chopper base.... they had a small shield generator but it was old so it quickly over heated but before it did that Thrawn ceased the bombing and sent down transports and walkers....

“A series made for children” *cuts off head*

Local shields like on hoth would force ground invasions. I would assume most large citys and important strateigic resources like droid factories had local shields that could withstand any bombardment. Once you have ground forces in battle you certainly would not wish to bomb your own forces Thrawn used a jedi to enhance the accuracy of the turbo laser crews during thier bombardments

The battle of Umbara definitely needed a few orbital bombardments. The land assault was necessary, but the Umbarans had a few strongholds that needed some good ol’ space elbow grease.

This is basically the American doctrine with war- Don't get your hands dirty, just call in an air strike and annihilate the enemy position. That's really what they needed to do here, don't waste troops to get slaughtered on an open field, just launch some turbolaser barrages or tactical nukes or just mortar strikes and blow the enemy (also lacking cover) to bits. Hoth at least addressed this with the ground based shield, and in many cases there could be too many ground based defenses to safely stay on station and offer air support. But as you said, that's clearly not the case at the Battle of Geonosis.

I love it when Wedge decides to "introduce" the Vong to the Empire and has the Lusankya open up on their ground troops.

Halfway through reading Twilight Company and the battles so far seem fairly realistic Also, I’d guess that to do a precise orbital bombardment you need to be dangerously low Finally, on Dathomir the Nightwitch Base was quite far underground and Talzin, Grievous’ target, could probably escape further down if he tried a bombardment

Yes, Orbital Bombardment. What an excellent idea EckhartsLadder!

Maybe its just a really frowned upon practice, like the galaxy seems to be at war alot so maybe theres some kind of an unspoken agreement that causing more damage to planets than needed with an orbital bombardment is just not cool (but the again the death star is a thing so idk)

Your answer to why the Jedi didn’t do orbital bombardment on the factories with their Acclamator fleet that was present: “Meanwhile, the Republic army's goal was to capture the Separatists leadership and as much of the Geonosian droid foundries intact as possible in order to uncover the depths of the Separatist conspiracy, precluding the indiscriminate use of starship weapons. The resulting battle would mostly consist of ground combat then,” - Wookiepedia Out of the 12 Acclamtors that made up the Jedi assault fleet, most of them were either on the atmosphere, or in orbit around Geonosis, which is more than enough to take out some unarmed core ships and lightly armed Hardcell transports. So I don’t understand why the Jedi didn’t engage the Separatist fleet as it was escaping the system.

I always thought of orbital bombardment in situations like full war like the clone wars or during rebellions to be it like nukes in civ. Sure, you could just spam nukes on your enemy's cites, but then there will be nothing for you to claim without spending even more resources trying to fix it all and make it workable. All those cities, resources and -Slave labour- people wasted.

Eck watching the Battle of Geonosis: "It makes no damn sense. Compels me though."

This is the equivalent to wanting to use nukes in every battle.

"Nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." Easy for the bad guys to lay waste to everything from orbit than it is for the good guys. If you want any of the resources/infrastructure, or prisoners, then landing troops is the way to go. Some limited precision orbital strikes could still be possible in many cases though. The shields are typically "energy shields". The capital ships and AT-ATs couldn't shoot through it, but the walkers could walk through it.

I feel like if they had orbitaly bombarded the night sisters, Count Dooku would’ve died by way of the voodoo magic, because we don’t know how far in deep those caverns went, and if grievous wasn’t there to personally kill her then she could’ve kept using the magic to kill Dooku

that outro always gets me

And there's the 1000 other reasons why it does make sense 1. John Williams music

he has started to bring the christian minecraft servers back its a pathway ah screw it

Great call on the naval gunfire missing, wild to think with a space navy that it can reach all points on a planet with great effect on target. Cheers.

Cool Video. Similarly, I was watching Empire yesterday and was thinking that the X-wings the rebels had would probably be more effective than their speeders at the battle of Hoth.

The US could have sat off and flattened every city in Iraq without breaking a sweat. Of course, the world press and public opinion would have ended up isolating the US. So you do things the hard way to avoid that. And there is a lot more prestige in capturing something relatively intact (so that you can use it later) rather than just capturing a big pile of rubble. Why fight for something to begin with if all you wanted to do was blow it up? If you just want it destroyed then you don't send the troops. Seems to cover most of these battles. They were trying to capture facilities, not just wipe it out and leave.

Nebula vs. Pelleaon Resurgent vs. MC 85 Bellator vs. Resurgent Starhawk vs. Nebula Nebula+Endurance vs. Resurgent Who would win? #StarshipVersus #AskEck

This guy: explaining why it makes no sense Some clone: WATCH OUT FOR THOSE WRISTROCKETS

Love your videos man! My thought on why they didn't use bombardment is genosis is they had air superiority but they probably wanted to take the factories. theyre using old clones and having the ability to make droids would be a huge advantage. Or atleast the ability to build sabotage droids like the {kamino} (people) did.

*A series made for children* "It's treason then."

Hm yes The Star Wars here is made out of ground battles

I agree, while to an extent ground forces are always going to be necessary for occupation, taking resources, and avoiding collateral damage; there are so many occasions in star wars that an orbital bombardment, scorched earth bombing runs, and artillery barrages seem like an obvious answer

I loved that scene too as a kid. My brother and I would just watch maul scenes and Geonosis sometimes that’s funny I’m glad I share that childhood joy 😂

Your Answer: respectable rules of war dude, just like how it is against the rules in our current society to drop a nuclear bomb to end conflicts, the same thing for star wars governments, and as I recall didn't they have a shield during the battle, and the Jedi leading the army means no nukes, they are a bunch of softies after all

I think that the CIS might have had a more valid reason than other factions for ground invasions. That being their armies being much more disposable than others. And taking into consideration it may be taxing energy wise for a capital ship to do orbital bombardment, it may be more cost effective for them to land troops instead. This is mostly reliant on how often a capital ship would have to refuel/rearm due to orbital bombardment.

If I recall correctly from Dark Forces Rising (Thrawn Trilogy #2), the Star Destroyer is not shooting into the ocean to boil it away but to force the submarine cruise ship to surface. The tactic is to punch a turbolaser bolt deep into the sea, where it explodes with a depth-charge like pressure-wave to crack the submerged vessel's hull.

Love tour videos. You have spoken in the past on how taxing on a regular isd's reactors repulsors can be. I don't understand any no sheilds in atmosphere non sense but bigger boat bigger repulors. Also palp wouldnt risk damaging all the Sith artifacts under the jedi temple with a turbo laser blast.

Just on the intro haven’t even heard what he has to say it but I can tell this is a good

A reason they have ground battles is because they need a ground team to retake/take over bases that they don’t want to destroy

I think it's a combination of factors ranging from a desire to see the enemy leadership captured, to pressure from ground commanders to get an opportunity to show their tactical skills and advance through the ranks. Plus in the case of the Empire, their opponent almost never committed their entire force to one operation. So even if they could conceivably wipe them out from orbit, they would lose any chance to search for information that might lead them to other cells, or potential plans that may cause headaches for the Empire. The rebellion typically destroyed such information quickly, but it was still worth it for the empire to try as often as possible.

The Jedi Temple was built over a Sith Shrine. Palpatine wanted it for a prize, he didn't want to destroy it.

Artillery is a powerful tool, but I think you are overestimating its power, especially against fortifications. Consider the Western Front of World War I, where millions of tons of artillery rounds were used over several years against the trench lines without being able to break them. In the World War II Pacific Theater, US battleships would give islands what they called "the Spruance Haircut" (so named because it would seem to have cut down every tree on the island) and troops would still have to engage in massive ground assaults to actually clear the Japanese defenders out. Turbolasers don't appear to be any more powerful or accurate than those examples' cannons.

"Why didn't Gandalf just get the eagles to take the ring straight to Mount Doom?" Because then there would be no story or those ground battles you love so much.

I've wondered this SO many times

Lots... really so much about Star Wars doesn't make sense but it's fun! I love the alien settings...(also ship and weapons design is sort of fun in a creative way, too)

Consider that in some of those battles the primary objective was to retrieve someone or something that is on the ground, like wanting to arrest Gunray (TPM), rescue Obi Wan (AOTC), trying to arrest Dooku (also AOTC), capturing the chancellor (ROTS), Darth Vader wanting to capture the Millenium Falcon in the battle of Hoth, etc...

Awesome video. For Dathomere though, Grevious couldn’t bomb the base since Dooku’s voodoo doll was in there. Bombing the witches would kill Dooku and lose the war for the separatists.

weren't ion canons more common at this time? if an enemy had these then you could be risking an entire capital ship to take out 1 outpost which wouldn't be worth it.

I get what your saying about the attack on Dathomir, but I feel like the nightsisters had some way to find a droid and even raise some sort of shield to protect them, just thoughts though, great video!

Side note on 3:44, instead of bombing the shields couldn’t they have bombed the shield gate? Obviously ramming it with a star destroyer worked fine but it was surprising none of the ships bombed the gate to assist their fighters

I believe the droid factories were shielded as shown in clone wars, also you can see the geonosian AA-Guns ripping acclamators apart that go too low.

A good half of your points can be negated when you remember that Palpatine wanted the war to look like a genuine struggle to gain control over the senate.

"Damn sir, we just turned the entire Jedi into vapor, and bored a hole from the spire down to the undercity. Guess we shouldn't have let a B1 do a B2 job...."

"Your feelings for these ground battles are not real." "THEY ARE REAL TO ME!!"

Might be able to swing a cultural explanation, sort of along the same lines as 17th to 19th century European military conduct and what was and was not considered to be acceptable military strategy.

It's like using a Nuke I guess, it's really effective at de-living your enemies but just because you have a Nuke doesn't mean you'd want to use it.

Bombing a shield, if it is smaller like the Hoth Base shield, will eventually overload the generator. At least with a Star Destroyer, because it can output a huge amount of turbolaser fire. (And yes, I know that turbolasers decrease in power as they enter atmosphere)