First Order military

"The First Order is a remnant born of a war thirty years gone. Yes, they persist, yes, they continue, but by all accounts they do so barely. They are, at best, an ill-organized, poorly equipped, and badly funded group of loyalists who use propaganda and fear to inflate their strength and their importance.''" "They're flying state-of-the-art TIEs, they're using commando boarding parties and latest-generation attack shuttles in clear violation of the Galactic Concordance. [&hellip;] That's not a poorly organized force. That's not a poorly motivated'' force. That's a real threat."

- Major Lonno Deso and Commander Poe Dameron

The First Order military was the military force of the authoritarian First Order born to oppose the New Republic and the Resistance in the wake of the former Galactic Empire. Descended from the Imperial Military, it was comprised of the Army and the Navy as well as Special Forces, and was led by General Armitage Hux of First Order High Command, along with Snoke, who acted as Supreme Leader until Kylo Ren killed him and took his place as new Supreme Leader. The First Order fleet stood almost unchallenged due to the New Republic's push for galactic disarmament.

Origins
Following the defeat of the Galactic Empire, the First Order military would rapidly expand in the Unknown Regions&mdash;its leaders intending to eventually reclaim the galaxy from the New Republic&mdash;in clear violation of the Galactic Concordance and Republic laws. Within the Unknown Regions, military bases and shipyards were constructed to churn out some of the technologically superior weapons and starfighters utilized by the military, with many of the Old Empire's greatest military secrets falling into the hands of its successor state. To avoid treaty restrictions banning the sale of weaponry to the First Order, galactic arms manufacturers BlasTech Industries and Merr-Sonn Munitions, Inc. spun off a subsidiary known as the Sonn-Blas Corporation, which manufactured much of the First Order's weaponry within First Order space, while Sienar-Jaemus Army Systems and Aratech-Loratus Corporation provided spacecraft and vehicles to the Order.

Development
In violation of New Republic laws regarding capital ships, the Resurgent-class Star Destroyer would be developed by Kuat-Entralla Engineering. It featured more than three-thousand turbolasers and ion cannons, and was specifically designed to evoke the fearful image of the Old Empire's Imperial-class Star Destroyers. Although the First Order's military might had been suspected to be significantly large, not even General Organa's worst-case scenario estimates could conceive of just how large the First Order built up their military.

Thirty years after the Battle of Endor one of the military's primary bases of operations was the Starkiller Base, an ice planet converted into a First Order stronghold. Utilizing it as their unofficial headquarters, the base was armed with a superweapon capable of destroying entire star systems by firing a planet-destroying beam through hyperspace. By then, the military was led by a triumvirate of General Armitage Hux, Kylo Ren and Captain Phasma.

A new galactic war
Shortly after the Hosnian Cataclysm, Starkiller Base was destroyed in a Resistance attack. Before its destruction, the Supreme Leader ordered Hux to evacuate the base and return to him with Kylo Ren.

A First Order fleet then attacked the Resistance base at D'Qar. Although their dreadnought, the Fulminatrix, was destroyed, the First Order managed to annihilate the base, destroy the Resistance's entire bombing fleet, and force them to flee to the Crait system. General Hux then used new hyperspace trackers to confront the Resistance with their massive flagship, the Supremacy. Attacks by Kylo Ren and his squad of TIE fighters destroyed the Resistance's starfighter squadrons, including Poe Dameron's own Black One, and its entire leadership team with the exception of General Leia Organa. They also destroyed their medical frigate and the Ninka.

Although former stormtrooper Finn and Resistance mechanic Rose Tico tried to deactivate the main hyperspace tracker on the Supremacy itself, with the help of the thief DJ, they were captured by First Order security bureau officers and stormtroopers. DJ later told General Hux about the Resistance's plan to flee in cloaked transports in exchange for money, who, upon which confirming the information, ordered the Supremacy to destroy the transports.

However, Admiral Amilyn Holdo turned the cruiser Raddus towards the Supremacy and made a hyperspace jump that cleaved the ship in half. This also stopped the execution of Finn and Rose, who later escaped on a stolen shuttle after defeating Captain Phasma and a few dozen stormtroopers. This sacrifice allowed the remaining Resistance transports to flee to the old Rebel outpost of Crait.

Meanwhile, Kylo Ren brought the force-sensitive scavenger Rey to Snoke in his Throne Room, upon which Snoke tried to get the location of Luke Skywalker out of her. Despite her resistance to his methods, including torture, Snoke ordered Kylo Ren to kill the restrained scavenger. However, Kylo Ren ignited Luke's lightsaber into Snoke's side and pulled it towards Rey, thus killing him and chopping his body in half. After defeating Snoke's guard, Rey rejected Ren's offer of ruling the galaxy together, instead trying to take Luke's lightsaber. The lightsaber split in two, but Rey recovered both parts and escaped the Supremacy. Meanwhile, Kylo declared himself new Supreme Leader after force-choking Hux. He then ordered the First Order to assault the Resistance base on Crait.

The First Order brought a massive superlaser siege cannon enough to destroy the massive door. Despite a desperate Resistance counterattack with ski-speeders, the door was destroyed. However, a Force projection of Luke Skywalker delayed First Order forces by confronting Kylo Ren, which allowed time for the Resistance to escape on the Millennium Falcon.

Ground forces
"My men are exceptionally trained, programmed from birth."

- General Armitage Hux

Like its predecessor, the First Order employed the use of stormtroopers, including variants such as snowtroopers. It also utilized specialists including megablaster heavy assault troopers, flametroopers and riot control stormtroopers and selectively had one of the three variants placed in every ten-member stormtrooper squad. Unlike the inconsistent academy standards of the previous Galactic Empire, training of the new generation of stormtroopers emphasized improvisation and counter-insurgency operations, including guerrilla tactics. With the First Order lacking the numerical superiority of the Galactic Empire, better equipped and trained soldiers resulted in higher trooper proficiency than the previous Galactic Empire. Soldiers were often trained on capital ships and underwent vivid simulations to create the most loyal soldiers, which was an extension of the ideas of Commandant Brendol Hux and his Commandant's Cadets.

To help infantry in snowy environments the Order deployed Light Infantry Utility Vehicles, a fast snowspeeder. More armored were the All Terrain Mobile Artillery used, for example, on Starkiller Base.

Naval forces
The First Order Navy was mainly based on Battlecruisers like its Imperial predecessor, with the Navy at its height constructing capital ships numbering well into the hundreds via Project Resurrection. Resurgent-class Star Destroyers were the threatening capital ships deployed against the First Order's targets, but the Resistance believed that vessels even larger than them were in existence. The First Order also used older Imperial-class Star Destroyers and smaller ships compared to Resurgent-class Star Destroyers, as Lancer-class frigates, Maxima-A class heavy cruisers, Dissident-class light cruisers and Nebulon-Ks.

For ground assaults the Order made a great use of Atmospheric Assault Landers; a hundred of them could be carried by Resurgent-class Star Destroyers. They also used Upsilon-class command shuttles. To achieve space superiority the Order deployed TIEs in two variants: TIE/fo space superiority fighters and its two-seated version, the TIE/sf space superiority fighter, this one used by the First Order's Special Forces.