Space warfare

Space warfare was the use of military starships and other spacecraft for the purposes of warfare across star systems and the Galaxy. Evolving from water navy engagements and in turn the earliest orbital battles, space warfare became a high technology affair that often defined the outcome of the galaxy's most important conflicts.

Technology
While the sizes and capabilities of starships varied, four main technologies drove and were advanced by space warfare: shielding, sublight propulsion, hyperdrive technology and weapons systems. Shields are projected from shield generators, and are incredibly important in combat and hyperspace. Also, shields come in two types: particle shields and ray shields. Hyperdrive technology works on using a fusion generator to ripple space-time. Then, the ship is propelled of the ripples into hyperspace. Sublight drives also use a fusion generator, but not in the same way. They shoot particles out of the ship at very high speed. Weapons systems consist of mostly lasers and missiles. Smaller vessels like starfighters and shuttles may only have a small number of lasers. Larger vessels like freighters and captital ships on the other hand can have multiple laser cannons from point defence lasers to much larger ship to ship weapons. For example the Republic's Hammerhead-class capital ships, used during the time of the Mandalorian Wars and the Jedi Civil War had four Dual Heavy Turbo Lasers and two Point Defence Laser Cannon Batteries. Small Freighter type vessels like the Ebon Hawk used by Revan and The Jedi Exile and the Millenium Falcon used by Han Solo and the Rebel Alliance often had manually controlled laser turrets. The Yuuzhan vong have their own versions for these: Dovin Basals and plasma cannons.

History
Space warfare was inspired by and heavily based on aquatic naval engagements using surface and sub-surface (stealth) warships. As technology evolved and various races achieved spaceflight and then faster-than-light travel, the traditions of naval combat extended to the three-dimensional battleplanes that made up the vacuum of space.

Strategy and tactics
Strategies in space warfare mirrored those applied on the ground: asymmetric, attrition, conventional and psychological.

The multidimensional battlefield made space warfare tactics complex and difficult to master. In addition to the complexities of space combat itself, related operations and logistics were equally complex. For example, known hyperdrive lanes were a factor, as the angle of attack determines which starships will be in range of the entering fleet and vice versa.

Interdictor warships were able to hold fleets in realspace at will, preventing enemy retreat. In this sense, they were a valuable addition to any fleet.

The source of a fleet's ships, a shipyard, is very valuable, and made an important target for an opposing force. As they require ships to defend themselves, shipwrights are also very vulnerable and the defending fleet must destroy any opposition before it can damage the docks. In this case speed is an important factor to the invaders.

In general capital ships fought other capital ships, and starfighters fought other starfighters. Exceptions include starfighters equipped with proton torpedos or other warheads, and capital ships like the Lancer-class frigate, which were designed to fight starfighters. However some capital ships were equipped with anti-starfighter cannons, commonly known as Auto-Turrets. Vessels like the CIS Providence Class capital ship and the Republic Mandator II Class Star Dreadnought, utilise these Auto-Turrets to defend against enemy starfighters.

When capital ships fought each other, one of the most basic tactics was to maximize the damage one did to one's enemy, and minimize one's own damage. This was often accomplished by maneuvering the ship so that you had more weapons to bear on the enemy than vice-versa. , as well as presenting a narrower profile for the enemy to shoot at.

The Mon Calamari Admiral Ackbar was renowned for developing several different space battle strategies which ultimately led to countless Alliance Victories.

Other tactics include using starfigters to distract the larger guns of capital ships minimizing damage to frigates and other capital ships. This is ineffective if the ship has anti-fighter defenses such as auto-lasers. But still provides bombers and larger ships to do damage. This can be viewed as suicidal by some commanders.

Thrawn Pincer
The Thrawn Pincer was a tactic pioneered by Grand Admiral Thrawn and used by him at the Battle of Bilbringi. The tactic first called for Interdictor cruisers to create a gravity well which denied the enemy an easy escape. Then, reinforcements could hyperspace into the general area and be pulled out of hyperspace with accuracy and surprise which would otherwise be very difficult to achieve. Admiral Ackbar used this same tactic to help defeat the Ciutric Hegemony.

Ackbar Slash
The Ackbar Slash was a space warfare tactical maneuver devised by Admiral Ackbar. It involved a side's ships forcing their way into the middle of an enemy formation. The desired result was that, with enemy gunners running a high risk of shooting their own forces, they would be hesitant to fire. The other side would have no such risk, and be able to cause higher damage to their enemy. If the enemy ships did choose to fire, the risk of them hitting each other still worked to the advantage of the attacking fleet. In addition, the enemy ships in this situation could usually bring no more than half of their weapons to bear, while nearly all of the weapons on the ships executing the Ackbar Slash could be used, as there would be enemies on both sides to target.