Battlegroup

The Battlegroup was a level of command and organization in the Imperial Army, replacing the Divisions that had been widespread in sector and planetary forces under the Old Republic, and comparable to the Legions of the Grand Army of the Republic and the Stormtrooper Corps.

A typical Battlegroup consisted of four Regiments, and four Battlegroups in turn formed a standard Corps. Although precise numbers varied depending on the precise type of unit, the overall strength of most Battlegroups was on the order of roughly 15,000, including a little better than 10,000 front-line troops. All Battlegroups had a standard 274-man HQ detail, consisting of the commanding High Colonel, ten senior adjutants ranking as Major or higher, two security platoons and 188 other support personnel.

Battlegroups were usually deployed in full strength in situations where a sizeable enemy force had to be destroyed in the field, capable of stand-alone operations where a well-organized resistance controlled an area of a planet, and also serving as the primary tactical subdivisions in a Corps deployed for a full planetary conquest campaign. Of course, not all Battlegroup deployments were for offensive operations, and not every operation required a full Battlegroup. For instance, the 1st Tapani Assault Battlegroup at Tallaan were the primary Imperial Army presence in Tapani Sector, representing a largely defensive deployment that due to political considerations nevertheless warranted a Major General in command. And in all Battlegroups, individual Regiments or Battalions could be detached to deal with low-level insurgency or a specific focused target, or to support a Navy operation - although Imperial tactical thinking did restrict the use of Armor Regiments to full-scale Battlegroup offensives.

The basic Line Battlegroup consisted of three Line Regiments and an Assault Regiment; essentially infantry forces, these formations lacked armor and manoeuvrability, and were considered understrength for campaign deployment by the time of the Galactic Civil War. More capable was the Reinforced Battlegroup, a flexible formation capable of both conquering and controlling territory, containing two Line Regiments, a Heavy Weapons Regiment, and an Armor Regiment. Some Army officers believed that this combination of forces would make a better basic benchmark for the standard Battlegroup, but finite resources, coupled with the organizational challenge of the transformation, meant that by and large, the Empire preferred to increase the effectiveness of Line Regiments through the established system of augmentation - and, of course, a Line Battlegroup's lack of capacity for effective campaign warfare did not reduce the effectiveness of its component Regiments in other scenarios.

Two more heavily equipped types of Battlegroup were designed to defeat Rebel forces in the field in two different scenarios. The first of these was the Mobile Battlegroup, consisting of three Repulsorlift Regiments and one Armor Regiment, was designed for manoeuvre warfare on planets where an open campaign front existed between zones of Imperial and Rebel control. In contrast, the Armored Battlegroup, comprising four Armor Regiments, was designed to fight brief assault campaigns where the enemy presence took the form of several concentrations of military strength in a relatively restricted area.

Alongside these field formations, there was also an Auxiliary Battlegroup attached to every Corps; this was an organizational formation designed to provide a convenient means for brigading resources specific to the Corps rather than its component Battlegroups, most notably CompForce troops and air support units.

Behind the scenes
As with many elements of the Imperial Army, most information on Battlegroups comes from the The Imperial Sourcebook.