Grand Army of the Republic/Legends



"As my first act with this new authority, I will create a Grand Army of the Republic to counter the increasing threat of the Separatists."

- Supreme Chancellor Palpatine

The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR for short), also known as the Clone Army or Republic Army, was the armed forces of the Galactic Republic in its final years, and afterwards served as the nucleus for the armed forces of the Galactic Empire.

It was created by the Kaminoan "cloners" on Kamino, and comprised of two hundred thousand clone trooper units and their war machines, as of the start of the Clone Wars.

The template for the clones was bounty hunter Jango Fett, whose only request in return, in addition of course to an abundance of credits, was an unaltered clone by the name of Boba.

After the initial engagements, a million more clone trooper divisions were added to the ranks of the army, followed by additional millions by the conclusion of the war.

The origin of the Grand Army
At the beginning of the Palpatine government (32 BBY), the Republic had no standing armed forces, though the debate about the adoption of one had been ongoing for decades. At one time, the Republic's army and navy forces were considerable, but in the wake of the Light and Darkness War (1,000 BBY), a gradual process of downscaling began, in favor of increased support from the Jedi Order. More and more often, the Jedi were called upon to act as negotiators with teeth. But as crises piled upon each other, some within the order began to sense a coming darkness, which their numbers alone would not be sufficient to fight. The creation of a clone army was apparently secretly ordered by Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas without the knowledge or approval of his comrades, though it was actually part of a plot concocted by Darth Sidious to craft an army for the Sith Lords.

Though the clone troopers fought under Jedi lead during the Clone Wars, the army was turned against some loyalists and the Jedi when the Galactic Empire was formed at the war's end. Supreme Chancellor/Emperor Palpatine wielded executive control over the army, and transformed it into the military of his Galactic Empire.

Order of Battle
The army was split into separate Orders of Battle (ORBATs). These were regular forces, and Special Forces. Most of the structure of the regular forces was unchanged through the Clone Wars and was even used by the Galactic Empire. The special forces were highly independent clone commandos that had specific objectives and required very little help from Jedi commanders.

Command structure of regular forces

 * Grand Army&mdash;10 systems armies, a total of 3,000,000 troops, with Supreme Chancellor as commander-in-chief.
 * Systems Army&mdash;2 Sector Armies (294,912 troops) led by a High Jedi General (Jedi Council member)
 * Sector Army&mdash;4 corps (147,456 troops) by a Senior Jedi General (Jedi Master)
 * Corps&mdash;4 legions (36,864 troops) led by a Clone Marshal Commander and Jedi General.
 * Legion/Brigade&mdash;4 regiments (9,216 troops) led by a Senior Clone Commander and a Jedi General.
 * Regiment&mdash;4 battalions (2,304 troops) led by a Jedi Padawan Commander.
 * Battalion&mdash;4 companies (576 troops) led by a Major.
 * Company&mdash;4 platoons (144 troops) led by a Captain.
 * Platoon&mdash;4 squads (36 troops) led by a Lieutenant.
 * Squad&mdash;9 troops led by a Sergeant.

Command structure of special forces

 * Special Operations Brigade (SO BDE)&mdash;20 groups (5,000 men), commanded by Jedi General Arligan Zey, made up of 10 battalions by one year after the Battle of Geonosis.
 * Commando Group&mdash;5 companies (500 men), commanded by Junior Jedi General Bardan Jusik (Jedi Knight).
 * Company&mdash;5 troops (100 men).
 * Troop&mdash;5 squads (20 men).
 * Squad&mdash;4 men.

Artillery

 * All Terrain Attack Pod
 * All Terrain Experimental Transport
 * Self-Propelled Heavy Artillery
 * Unstable Terrain Artillery Transport

Armor

 * All Terrain Armored Transport
 * All Terrain Heavy Enforcer
 * All Terrain Tactical Enforcer
 * Heavy Assault Vehicle/wheeled A4 Juggernaut
 * Heavy Assault Vehicle/wheeled A5 Juggernaut
 * Heavy Assault Vehicle/wheeled A6 Juggernaut

Heavy cavalry

 * All Terrain-Personal Transport
 * Infantry Support Platform
 * TX-130S fighter tank
 * TX-130T fighter tank

Combat service support

 * Low Altitude Assault Transport/cargo
 * Low Altitude Assault Transport/vehicle

Aerial assault

 * HAET-221 gunboat
 * Low Altitude Assault Transport/infantry

Mechanized infantry

 * All Terrain Armored Transport
 * All Terrain Open Transport
 * All Terrain Tactical Enforcer
 * Heavy Assault Vehicle/wheeled A4 Juggernaut
 * Heavy Assault Vehicle/wheeled A5 Juggernaut
 * Heavy Assault Vehicle/wheeled A6 Juggernaut
 * Republic Troop Transport

Reconnaissance

 * 74-Z speeder bike
 * All Terrain Recon Transport
 * All Terrain Scout Transport
 * BARC speeder
 * Republic recon speeder
 * 105-K lancer bike

Notable divisions

 * 7th Sky Corps
 * 9th Assault Corps
 * 41st Elite Legion
 * 91st Reconnaissance Corps
 * 212th Attack Battalion
 * 327th Star Corps
 * 501st Legion
 * Delta Squad
 * Galactic Marines
 * Homeworld Security Command
 * Lancer Battalion
 * Sky Corps
 * Squad Seven

Behind the scenes

 * The GAR is actually the second armed force in the prequels to be given the name "grand army." The first was the Gungan Grand Army from The Phantom Menace. No one has yet explained Lucas's penchant for using this term for his military organizations, though it can be speculated that he was fond of the name of Napoleon Bonaparte's imperial armed forces, the Grand Army or La Grande Armee.


 * Also, the name "Grand Army of the Republic" uses the same formalized language as armed forces used in the American Civil War (1861-1865). Though the overall Union Army (also known as the Northern Army or Federal Army) was named simply, its major units were given formal designations based on rivers. Thus, they were named Army of the Potomac, Army of the Ohio, Army of the Tennessee, and so on. One unit in particular, which newspapers referred to as the Grand Army of the West, was commanded by General William Tecumseh Sherman during his march through the South, and it may be this that inspired Lucas as well as the Napoleonic model. It should also be noted that the post-Civil War Union veterans' association was known as the "Grand Army of the Republic."


 * The Confederate States Army, or CSA, named its units after states or geographic regions rather than rivers, such as the Army of Northern Virginia, the Army of Tennessee, the Army of the Peninsula, and the Army of the Northwest. The Confederate veterans' organization was known as the United Confederate Veterans.


 * The ongoing references to the American Civil War may be one of Lucas's subtle ways of utilizing the language of the actual Civil War to flesh out his own fictitious civil war. This is likely also why he used the name "Confederacy" to refer to the breakaway segments of the Republic, as opposed to some other name.

Numbers
There has been some controversy surrounding the actual number of clones part of the Grand Army of the Republic. In dialogue in Attack of the Clones, it is established that 200,000 "units" were ready for action at the outbreak of the Clone Wars, with a million more "well on the way". Although the movie does not elaborate on the meaning of "units", the novelization and some Expanded Universe sources have treated the term as though it referred to individual clones.

This means that, at the war's beginning, the Grand Army would have consisted of 200,000 clones, later raised to 1,200,000, a figure apparently attained by the time of Shatterpoint (written by Matthew Stover), set six months after the Battle of Geonosis. A figure of ~3 million clones was cited in the article Guide to the Grand Army of the Republic and the novel Republic Commando: Triple Zero (both written by Karen Traviss, with Ryan Kaufman as co-author on the Guide...), set a year after Geonosis.

In a later discussion on TheForce.net's literature boards, statements were made by Kaufman, denying that this was treated as a definitive figure for the total army:


 * "FYI, re: 3 million.


 * LFL was very clear to us that no fixed number of total clones would or could be assigned.


 * Therefore, the number 3 million (plus) does not represent the entire fighting force."

Additionally, most stories made since AOTC have shown hundreds of battles, many of which with massive losses for the clones, thereby negating any argument that they represented a "small, elite, special operations force" compared with regular battle droids.

The largest figure given for the Grand Army so far, was a million clone divisions, which were being prepared at the start of the war, and with additional millions more undergoing evaluation. This information was stated in Inside the Worlds of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (written by Simon Beecroft and Curtis Saxton), a book dealing directly with the worlds presented in the film.

Even with sources pointing out the larger amount of troops, and with the problem effectively resolved, focus still remains on the smaller figures, leading to some interesting findings:


 * If the figure of three million clone troopers were to be taken as absolute, it would contrast with the sources that have the opposing Confederacy fielding quadrillions or quintillions of battle droids, both as ship-operators as well as ground troops.
 * These 3 million troops would also be divided among ship-operators and ground troops, like the battle droids.
 * Although the GAR is engaged in a Galaxy-spanning conflict, its stated size would make it significantly smaller than that of the national armies used in some major real-world conflicts. For example, close to 13,000,000 men served in the armed forces of the Third Reich between 1939 and 1945.

As to the disparity with the numbers of battle droids, the recent short story Odds (authored again by Karen Traviss), has suggested that the CIS only had hundreds of million battle droids, with the larger figures being an "intelligence failure".

With even the Supreme Commander of the Droid Armies believing he controlled quintillions of battle droids (stated in the online supplement to Abel G. Pena's story Unknown Soldier in Insider 86), this is an unlikely scenario. Also, with the Dorling Kindersley line of books (which first mentioned droid numbers), being written from an out-of-universe perspective, high droid numbers would have been stated matter-of-factly, and any deception would have been noted (as it was with the mention of Invisible Hand trading places with its sister-ships, in DK's Star Wars Revenge of the Sith: Incredible Cross-Sections.)

It should also be borne in mind that a battledroid is not directly equivalent to a clone trooper: standard B-1 battle droids were cheap, expendable units, often used for foot patrol in civilian areas, and typically deployed for combat in massed units that lacked the initiative and versatility of real soldiers, and relied instead on sheer numbers to overwhelm opposition. Despite this apparent disparity, clone troopers have often been shown as falling just as easily to enemy fire.

Another source that counteracts the 3 million clone-belief is the New Essential Chronology (by Daniel Wallace and Kevin J. Anderson), which had ~3.2 million clones participating in the Battle of Muunilinst alone.

The account of the Battle of Muunilinst in the New Essential Chronology says that the Republic landing involved "hundreds of assault ships, each one groaning from the weight of troopers and war machines"; the figure of 3.2 million is arrived at if this phrase is extrapolated to mean around two hundred Acclamator-class assault ships, each carrying its full capacity of 16,000 clones. While the term "assault ships" could indicate another, smaller type of vessel, no such ships have ever been referred to in Clone Wars literature, and there is no reason to assume the assault ships were not Acclamators.

The statement that only a few dozen ships were seen on-screen in the Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoon bears little meaning, as many battles in SW are often fleshed out in different sources. The same series also showed hundreds of Providence-class carrier/destroyers in the Second Battle of Coruscant, yet some people treat this as unreliable. Treating the same series selectively is a fan's right, but belongs in fanon.

Although Traviss attempted to retcon the issue of clone numbers in her story Odds, the fact that it simply restates her own three-million number while justifying it by contradicting previously-established sources on CIS forces leaves the issue even more disjointed than it was before.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Battlefront
 * Star Wars: Battlefront II
 * Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
 * Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds: Clone Campaings
 * Star Wars: The Clone Wars
 * Star Wars Clone Wars
 * Clone Wars Volume 1: The Defense of Kamino
 * Clone Wars Volume 2: Victories and Sacrifices
 * Clone Wars Volume 3: Last Stand on Jabiim
 * Clone Wars Volume 4: Light and Dark
 * Clone Wars Volume 5: The Best Blades
 * Clone Wars Volume 6: On the Fields of Battle
 * Clone Wars Volume 7: When They Were Brothers
 * The Cestus Deception
 * Medstar I: Battle Surgeons
 * Medstar II: Jedi Healer
 * Star Wars: Republic Commando
 * Republic Commando: Hard Contact
 * Republic Commando: Triple Zero
 * Secrets of the Jedi
 * Shatterpoint
 * Yoda: Dark Rendezvous
 * Labyrinth of Evil
 * Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
 * Star Wars Republic 78: Loyalties