Core (military unit)

"We have reinforcements coming. Two full divisions of foot soldiers, another core of snipers. Half a platoon of repulsorcraft armed with heavy guns."

- Lord Kaan

A core was a formation of troops, perhaps specifically of snipers, used in the Sith military of the Brotherhood of Darkness at the end of the New Sith Wars.

Snipers are also known to have been assigned in small numbers to individual units such as the Gloom Walkers, but they were distinguished from the ordinary Sith troopers by their abilities and weaponry (TC-17 sniper rifles), and as such they may have comprised a specialist cadre within in otherwise largely undifferentiated ranks of the infantry.

With this in mind, sniper cores may have served as rear-echelon formations to organize trained marksmen before their assignment to front-line forces.

Behind the scenes

 * In English, the word "core" is identical in pronunciation and etymology with the military term corps; both words can be used in a generic sense to indicate a group of troops (although "core" is probably less common than "corps"), but "corps" also serves as a specific term for large military formations, typically tens of thousands strong. It may therefore be that this spelling was used here simply to represent the generic, rather than the the specific, meaning of "corps", but it is possible that the term "core" was given a more specific, technical sense within the Sith military, as outlined above. Lord Kaan's words certainly suggest that there are "cores" of snipers in the army on Ruusan.

Appearances

 * Darth Bane: Path of Destruction