Base Delta Zero/Legends

"The Moff... wants Nar Shaddaa reduced to rubble."

- Admiral Winstel Greelanx

Base Delta Zero was the military code used by the Old Republic and the Galactic Empire to order the complete destruction of a target, eliminating all life, industry, and natural resources. As such, it denoted the most severe of several levels of destruction that could be directed against a center of resistance, and typically involved laying waste to an entire planet by orbital bombardment.

History
Devastating planetary bombardments are recorded from the earliest millennia of Galactic history. For instance, the Infinite Empire laid waste to Tatooine before the dawn of the Old Republic, and in the fortieth century BBY, the Sith forces in the Jedi Civil War obliterated Taris.

It is not known when the Republic Navy introduced the Base Delta Zero code, but during the Clone Wars, the order gained new notoriety when Republic fleets were used to destroy Separatist armies entrenched underground, literally melting the planetary surface above them.

Under the New Order, Base Delta Zero opertaions continued to be mounted primarily against targets that the Imperial Army had failed to gain control of by direct assault, but such missions acquired increasingly punitive overtones, being used against rebellious planets where the Empire judged a ground assault would incur too many Imperial casualties, or simply where forces were not available to mount a direct attack. For instance, in 4 BBY, Moff Sarn Shild ordered a Base Delta Zero mission against the smugglers' haven of Nar Shaddaa, while the torpedo sphere was developed largely as a dedicated bombardment platform, in keeping with the Tarkin Doctrine.

Other notorious Imperial-era atrocities, such as the bombardments of Caamas and Emberlene, are often grouped with Base Delta Zero missions; but Emberlene was not an Imperial operation, and although Imperial involvement in the Caamas holocaust now seems certain, the exact circumstances of the attack are unknown.

Moreover, while the Base Delta Zero code is normally associated with orbital bombardment and planet-wide destruction, it must be stressed that it is unclear whether either of these parameters was actually an integral part of the order. The Base Delta Zero missions of the Clone Wars were mounted against specific military targets, while the First Sun Mobile Regiment, a mercenary force of repulsorlift infantry, were often used by the Empire to perform localized assaults that had the same aims as Base Delta Zero missions, namely the total destruction of the target area and the massacre of its population.

Characteristics
The fact that a mercenary infantry unit like the First Sun could carry out localized operations that fulfilled the objectives of a Base Delta Zero serves to underline that it did not require the staggering firepower of a Star Destroyer. Similarly, in the attack on Nar Shaddaa mentioned above, the ships detailed for the mission were three Dreadnaught Cruisers and two Carrack-class light cruisers.

In some circumstances, it is clear that sufficient firepower had to be be directed at the surface to achieve at least localized melting of the target planet's crust, in order to destroy armies in underground entrenchments. But Nar Shaddaa shows that surface landings amid the rubble were sometimes neccessary to complete a Base Delta Zero, and that droids, at least, might be expected to remain functional on the surface at this stage of the operation.

Nevertheless, a Base Delta Zero was regarded as one of the most devastating operations that the Imperial military was capable of, and unlike other Imperial military codes, the designation was not subject to change, so that there was never any confusion when it was issued.

The Empire continued to use devastating bombardment tactics, for instance at Milagro, and some of these may have been Base Delta Zero operations; but the New Republic rejected planetary-bombardment missions outright, until Operation Emperor's Hammer during the Battle of Borleias in 28 ABY.

Behind the scenes

 * There is a widespread fanon belief that the Base Delta Zero order automatically implies the wholesale melting of an entire planet's crust. This is based not on canonical descriptions of Base Delta Zero, but on the statement in The Imperial Sourcebook that an Imperial-class Star Destroyer carried "enough firepower to reduce a civilized world to slag", and the Star Wars Technical Journal'' ' s claim that they "can reduce a planet surface to smoking debris in a matter of hours".


 * Neither of these statements is linked directly to Base Delta Zero in canon, however, and it is questionable whether they are literal descriptions of planet-wide crust-melting either, as to complete the bombardment of an Earth-sized world in a 24-hour period would require a continuous rate of fire affecting nearly six thousand square kilometers every second. By way of contrast, the bombardment of Caamas is described in Coruscant and the Core Worlds as achieving a complete holocaust of the target planet through igniting worldwide wildfires.


 * It is often claimed that the bombardment of Dankayo is depicted as a crust-melting Base Delta Zero in Scavenger Hunt; however, the Dankayo attack is never called a Base Delta Zero, and is never said to involve the melting of the planet's crust. It may be a Base Delta Zero, but this is not made explicit, and cannot be taken as certain.

Appearances

 * Labyrinth of Evil
 * The Hutt Gambit
 * Star Wars Adventure Journal 2