Maybe so, but Looking at the Military structure of the Old Republic, like in SWTOR, the Republic military wasn't that off really. It looked more like our Real life military then the Clone Army. There were Corps too, but they were more devised in Armor, Anti-armor, Special Forces, Elite Forces, Standard Forces, Anti-Sith Battalions, Aerial, Marine, Navy,... And jedi were not in charge of Legions/Batallions... Instead some Jedi Admirals/Generals were in charge of Fleets, Like the First Fleets, the Expeditionary fleets, Defense Fleets,... And the ranking system was more honest, having Generals, Admirals, Commanders and Supreme Commanders at the top of each division. The Old Republic military looked more like a ACTUAL Military then the Clone Army in my opinion. Star Wars has often proven that Old things are sometimes better then New things.
This video should be called “what happens when you and your writers have no clue about military formations and scaling,” making the clone army so small for a galactic war against a massive automated army is stupid writing in itself. Then they tried to fix this by having Dooku handicap the droid army Edit: the GAR is still my all time favorite military in Star Wars, I just wished their structure and numbers were more suited for the big war they were created to fight. Even though they were supposed to win
@@legoroan9866 That's cause the seps are an alliance of different bodies like militias and corporations. They get to be hodgepodge anyway because droid armies command themselves and are more disposable AND less complex in terms of strategy, tactics and general doctrine. They probably just give any fool who is slightly import and a few thousand droids and some factories then let him figure it all out. The tactical droids will take care of the hard stuff!
too many cooks spoil the broth, especially if none of them understand military organization (or scale, 3 million troops in the entire GAR makes it smaller than the German army in 1941)
its touched on in the Karin Traviss republic commandoes novels, that if the CIS is actually a trillion droids, or even a billion, they could probably stand on each other's shoulders and reach coruscant, much less drown the clones in a wave of steel. If the clone numbers are accurate, the Republic is literally not feeling a war at all, especially considering these people are not even recruited citizens. There simply isnt enough jedi, much less command capable jedi, to make the army any bigger, and since the conflict is already orchestrated, there isnt a need to bring in normal civillian or other military, non jedi types to lead. Defeats the purpose of it being a long form of a great Jedi noose. A civilization at war can usually field up to 10% of its population to fight a war, and even with half the galaxy no longer paying taxes, the republic was in no hurry to have anyone else do the bleeding, not humans, not aliens, and the seperatists specifically have a robot army for the same purpose of not raining new uncontrolled people.
Yea the number of clones have never made sense compared to the droids. While we can sorta wave this as the separatists only put the minimum in garrisons but still. Honestly if the war wasn't run by idiots and sidious you could arguably use the droids as a great guerrilla force. Imagine the nva but they dont sleep or eat, a war of attrition would ruin the republic
@@maxwellgarner3445But on the other hand, its later shown in TCW that funding the army was a major drain on government resources to the point that Coruscant wasn't able to properly function since resources that the mega city planet needed to import to keep running were being rerouted to the war effort. The idea of a galactic scale government going into major debt to fund an army of 3 million troops is ridiculous.
@mizu7662 the republic economy is in shambles because of papa Palpatine loosing the entire galactic gdp at the blackjack tables, very tragic. Nah it's probably the massive trade interdiction and that the core is fed by the midrim, the same midrim that's on fire and blocaded
My headcannon is that the Jedi kinda a tore a coherent system apart. They are used to operate in an ad-hoc fashion, assembling groups of Jedi for specific tasks and determining authority mission to mission. So they were not used to operating in a military hierarchy and frequently detached stuff as they saw fit, themselves taking direct command of increasingly small tactical operations. Many of those units would become fully independant entities over time and the entire structure very fluid and confiusing.
Seems to me like it was incoherent to start with, even if you remove Jedi from the equation the military structure makes little sense. Say what you will about the Jedi, but they seem to be pretty much the only people around who even could lead these forces; we barely hear of any non-Jedi generals in the GAR and that's probably because the galaxy is almost entirely devoid of proper military personnel. To add to that, the GAR was basically organized overnight by a government that had been demilitarized for a millennium, the Jedi were probably the only organization the Republic could turn to for military command.
@@alaskamark4562 This is true, but...there were enough people that finished military training and could lead an army in galaxy, and would join with no questions for the right price. All structures existed long before the GAR, and even persisted in empire times, using its funds to train all these stormtroopers and officers.
@@alaskamark4562That’s a TCW retardation. In the old EU lore there were more than enough other generals and the like, as well as people forget the GAR weren’t just the clones but planetary defence forces.
The true genius of this military structure is that the enemy isn't sure who they should try to assassinate Do they assassinate Cody or Anakin? Cody outranks him but Anakin is a jedi, what about all those green units? Surely they aren't all commanded by Gree? But if not then where are their commanding officers? How do you kill an anonymous officer?
Also do they assassinate cody or the clone A who somehow is higer rank than cody but cody has another clone B he commands that also commands the clone A?
Yep, and it's one thing when it's 1 guys vision, but as soon as you have entire teams of people you think they could have brought a guy on board that knows military stuff
Tbh it's always been like that The main antagonist forces can't even shoot straight and the stories more ABT the rise and fall of a space Messiah than war
you can go thank disney for fucking that up lol. The expanded universe was extremely good at drawing from IRL militaries and implementing them into the galaxy (ex. the imperial warlord era after return of the jedi, and literally every piece of clone wars material prior to the 2008 TV show that fucked it all up.)
I always thought that the reason Rex calls the 501st a battalion on Umbara is because only one battalion of the 501st was deployed there, while the other battalions of the 501st were elsewhere
Jedi immediately becoming Generals and their Padawans being given the rank of Commander (even if they are like 11 years old) is some of the most mind boggling world building l have ever witnessed. Edit: I may have worded this wrong to the point that people don’t understand my point exactly: I know that this is the whole point of the Jedi Order being hypothetical with their ways and such. I get that. The part that im confused about is that the GAR just allows this to happen in the first place. Like, l understand that in a hypothetical scenario that Politicians and CEOs of private companies would want to command armies in war, l totally understand that. What confuses me is the fact that armies would just agree to these Politicians and CEOs leading armies into battle. I don’t understand why the GAR allows this to happen in the first place. If that makes more sense
I actually feel like this actually makes sense because it just shows how incredibly overwhelmed the Jedi Council was with the war. Yes, the structure of the GAR is incredibly stupid and giving Command to Jedi without any actual military training is just naive but it makes sense in a world, that hasn't seen any large scale war for centuries.
@@floriandiem1223 We see in The Phantom Menace through Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon that the Jedi are more like Diplomatic Enforcers and they say they are Peacekeepers. That is totally fine. But that doesn’t make them able to lead tens of thousands of soldiers on multiple battlefield and how to manage billions of credits of military hardware. Lets imagine a hypothetical scenario if Qui-Gon survived The Phantom Menace somehow. Can we imagine this character knowing how to deploy Special Forces units behinf enemy lines for Infiltration, demolition, assassination or extraction missions? Can we imagine him knowing how to use a Battalion of Star Fighters to maintain Air Superiority over an occupied city? Can we imagine him knowing the best locations for Scouts to traverse through so they can report enemy positions to artillery crews? None of this makes any sense for Jedi to be Generals of. And l cant believe that 11 year olds are given high ranks as well
@@princeblasian3735 No of course not but that's exactly the point. The jedi don't know jack shit about how to lead a war but they are too afraid to pass command to someone else, that's why we see them making all of these stupid decisions. It actually makes sense from a lore pov for them to be absolute idiots when it comes to military planning
@@princeblasian3735 I think the Jedis being generals is one of those things that made sense in the context of the movies, but got way out of hand in the EU. In the movies, it serves the purpose of showing the militarization of the Jedi, places them near the clones during Order 66, and explains why the disciplined clones resented their untrained commanders. However, once the EU started placing them in command of a bunch of different units of varying sizes, as well as having their skills in battle vary from story to story, it starts to fall apart. For example, Ki Adi Mundi is simultaneously a sociopathic idiot who sends his army into the meat grinder on Muunilist, and a brilliant and caring commander on Geonosis. The whole concept just got way out of hand as more and more writers got involved.
@@buttbuttson737 Mundi is a good man when you actually fight next to him, but from a distance he leads poorly. He's more of a natural warrior than a commander.
I think the biggest thing is that they didn't want to focus on the organizational structure, they chose to just show us the units that happened to be serving aside the main characters we watched. We just don't have canon information on those, which some of the units mentioned on the chart I noticed aren't canon either, anymore at least.
It seems like CW season 7 tried to address the total absence of a chain of command by making Jesse a Lieutenant retroactively, by extending the same logic we can assume Waxer and Boil are also Lieutenants, as are Echo and Fives, since they're all shown to have roughly the same relationship with their respective commanders, the introduction of Vaughn also helped clear up a bit of the confusion because it was obvious Vaughn had prior command experience within the 501st, we just hadn't seen him on-screen before. Implying there were other companies off-screen doing other things commanded by clone officers we don't know or haven't seen yet. Still, that said, if you assume all of the ARCs were Lieutenants commanding platoons(we don't even see them commanding units at any point except for Jesse briefly after order 66) we only ever see enough officers/NCOs to fill out the senior command of maybe a small company, let alone a _brigade_ Like, if Jesse and Fives and co were LTs and therefore platoon commanders, then where are all of the captains and majors commanding the companies and battalions? or their sergeants directing the squads? If Anakin didn't introduce Rex as his "first in command" to Krell, I would have assumed there was an unnamed commander always offscreen doing more important things who was _actually_ in charge of the 501st, and Rex was just the CO of _ghost company_ specifically. Everything would have made so much more sense if they had just made it clear we're only seeing the command teams of company or battalion sized units on-screen
TCW is one of the main guilty things that make military structures a complete joke in star wars thats why i ignore it in the military aspect. somehow a mere captain leads the entire legion i would be fine if rex was something like an elite captain leading the 501st praetorian company but no
I think it works if you consider a "Command Company". The Commander of each Corps/Brigade obviously has overall command, but they also have a personal Company to protect/secure the Commander and act as their reserve
Echo, Fives and Jesse were all ARC troopers. So whilst they may have held rank, it's daubtfull they had any day-to-day command duties. Same concept as most special forces being sergeants in real life. Also Waxer was officially a platoon commander, with the rank of clone Lieutenant during the battle of Umbara.
2:10 in legends ranks were: Trooper, Corporal, sergeant, sergeant major, 2nd LT, 1st LT, captain, major, battalion commander, regimental commander, senior commander, and marshal commander With Jedi holding either Jedi Commander, General, Senior General, or High General
Also ranks in the actual military have a set ranking system like the way star wars is. But rank ≠ structure. The actual structure of the military is in a way like this. A colonel can be in charge of a Squadron, Wing, or group levels. A squadron is between 80-200 people typically. A wing being 2,000-4000, and etc. And I was in the military so I should know
Frankly even when Lucas was running this its clear that they have a very vague sense of how a military is structured and just toss around terms like army battlion legion and so on.
my theory is that the mid-level clone commanders were interchangeable between different positions. this would explain some of the issues of having clone commanders being in charge of several organizations rather than those having permanent independent HQ. Rex also gets expressly promoted to "commander" in season 7. before then, Ahsoka was the commander of Rex's battallion. when she came back, the legion was just split into one half for mandalore (the 332nd division, there being a 332nd company was a star wars blog error) and one half for coruscant. this means either division was roughly 2 regiments and Rex would have commanded at a higher degree than even his promotion. Ahsoka doesn't count at this point because she is just a "tactical advisor".
@@Kazako83unique names for units is fine as long as the chain of command isnt mucked up. Can often be good for both soldiers and civilian morale with famous honoured units or special forces. See the irl Coldstream Guards, Black Watch, etc etc
@@Rynewulf those are Regiments/Brigades usually or higher no? And a lot of them originate from when those units were the primary maneuver unit. Unique unit names for every battalion would get rather tiring, hence is not really done outside of specialist units. Example, the USSR had nearly 600 divisions at its height. Assuming they’re all rifle divisions (which they weren’t but hey) that’s 3 Regiments with 3 Battalions. That’s gonna be 5400 unique “xxth rifle battalion” you’re going to have. It’s not impossible I guess, but I’d rather have, say 1st Battalion/266th Regiment or “1/266” on the command display them “504th/266th” or something, since I’d more readily identify that at a glance.
@@Kazako83 it's still done in modern militaries. In the US military nearly every level of organization has its own unique numerical identifier. It's apart of keeping a tradition and upholding morale. You can go to wikipedia for nearly every unit in the US military to see their history, unit awards, notable members, and symbols. Pretty much any unit in all branches commanded by a field grade officer will have it's own unique unit name.
Also, if ur wondering why Cody it’s often shown leading only the 212th it’s because it was his “favorite” unit. Cody was an action man, not someone that stood in the back lines giving orders to his troopers fighting in the frontlines he was right there w them, where the battle was taking place. It’s also pretty difficult to fight w a whole corp in the front lines, imagine 40k men standing next to each other… so he decided to take the lead of a specific battalion (the best of the corp ofc) giving specific orders to them while receiving information by the rest of the corp (by his seconds in command) and giving more general orders to it. You should also remember that the republic was often invading an entire planet, not just a city and it’s impossible to show a planet size invasion while also focusing on the main characters that’s why the entire 7th corp it’s never shown. It’s not deployed all together, for it to happen there should be like a 40k droid army marching all together to a certain place to attack, in that case then,the entire 7th sky corp might be deployed in the same place and we would see 40k men with Cody in the front lines leading the whole corp but in specific the 212th. On the other hand if the republic was invading a planet full of separatist outposts scattered around the planet then the 7th would get “divided” into many different sub-units to conquer them and depending on the outpost Cody might decide to lead the 212th or maybe ghost company if the outpost isn’t that hard to conquer. The thing his Cody leads the 7th sky corp (and the third systems w obi) but since he can’t be everywhere on a planet at the same time he has to take the lead of a smaller unit (as I said previously while receiving l informations about the entirety of the corp and coordinating the forces. It’s impossible for a single man to fully control a 40k men army scattered around an entire planet that’s why there are ranks and everyone in the 7th is under Cody
Imagine if in real wars generals fought in the front lines that would be really bad no matter how good shots they would be. Thats why cody should just sit in the backline (preferably in orbit) looking at the situation issuing orders if it was meant to be realistic. But yes its meant to be cool so obviously the general is there in the front killing 100 battle droids a minute on a slow day.
@@clintonoh3108 yeah u’re right , I’m sorry if I forgot that you are actually the commander of the 7th sky corp and as a matter of fact you know what is logical to do in a battlefield. W that being said, if you don’t wanna hear talking about illogical explanations and illogical situations🤓☝️you shouldn’t have watched and commented a video where the author clearly came up with half arsed explanations. It’s well known that Star Wars isn’t logical and doesn’t follow the laws of physics, how is someone supposed to explain something that ISN’T logical in the first place with a logical explanation😂 The only way to make this work is to “came up with a half arsed, illogical justification of an illogical situation” if you want an in-universe explanation.
I don't know enough about the lore to say that for sure, but a very good reason the command chain could look like that would be this example: the commander of a legion might detach one bataillon or even just a company and put it directly under legion command. This usually happens when constituting a reserve or for a special task. So, in that case, it may appear that the legion commander is also the commander of a smaller unit, but, really, that smaller unit is just being placed directly under higher HQ command.
I think the issue of commanders being in charge of multiple levels of command is best explained as them being able to assume command of a smaller segment of the army for smaller ops. Because the Jedi are on the front lines so often, they need a consistent squad to accompany them that they can rely on. Therefore, Gree for example is in command of the entirety of the 9th assault corps and oversees all of their operations, but when Luminara needs to act directly he assumes control down the chain to the leader of the appropriately-sized segment for what Luminara requires, and presumably delegates his normal duties to a second in command in his absence. The lower segments in the chain probably have usual leaders that command them under normal circumsances, although a single company may be set aside as the personal company of the Jedi and only operate alongside them under the direct command of the Commander.
For all intents and purposes, Rex was the commander of the 501st. It's stated somewhere, can't remember canon or legends, that Anakin didn't officially promote Rex to commander because it would be to much paperwork. (Kenobi was his usual sarcastic, quippy self when he found out) and Rex can't do the paperwork to promote himself. Also, everything in the clone wars show is canon, so it is, in fact, the 501st battalion. Not legion. And the 332nd company was the entirety of Torrent company with some shinies. And we did have a coherent rank structure when AOTC came out, but it's gone to hell ever since.
@@Wolfsbane1100 Rex was captain for the first 3 months of the war, he could've been officially promoted before Ahsoka if became a thing. Sidenote, do you have a fanfic or AO3 account? Read some really amazing stories by someone called wolfsbane.
I remember when I was way younger I tried making a doc with the layout of the GAR. This video articulates why after weeks of headaches I gave up that foolish idea and realized how hopeless of a task it is lmfao.
I think a lot of this has to do with the lack of context given with all of the units as well as the leadership strategies of the clone wars. The Jedi tended to lead from the front (which is mentioned on Umbara when Pong Krell did not) so it could be assumed that the head Jedi commander picked a unit that either they liked or the one they anticipated would see the heaviest combat and led the clones personally and left the other units some degrees of freedom while working towards the overall goal. I also think the 501st legion is mostly used as a literary device to give anakin a lot of responsibility and power while also conveying that he’s still Obi-Wan’s padawan and thus, has less power than Obi-Wan.
I think that the most Jedi Generals chose to deploy themselves even when most of their troops were not in combat and we also need to consider that most likely that there were specific units like a armor company, infantry company, or maybe a mixed company.
Exactly and basically all the commanders with multiple units in here are also known as frontliners in the same way. My guess is that those instances were they had command over a smaller unit are cases of taking control of whatever unit was fit for the job or already in their area, simply pushing the normal unit command into a supporting role. We had cases in real history were general had to command batellions and companies instead of devisions and armys because they A. Had nothing more left or B. Were cut of from the rest. A good example is Erwin Rommel in france who was so fast and so petty that he turned of his radio, ignored all orders and not only lost contact to the army he was a part of, but also the bigger chunk of his devision because in the words of one cracked up blue hedgehog: "he gotta go fast".....
My understanding of where the Jedi fit within the GAR was that they are both in and out of the chain of command. Anakin's style of command (front aggressive assault) simply doesn't make sense to command a greater size of soldiers which explain why he is technically under Cody but in fact not really. He command clones who are under Cody and has seniority over leadership and field command while Cody exert a more overall logistical and strategic command. Even if the 501st wasn't truly special forces, they acted as shock troop and Vanguards because that's how Anakin fight.
One of the things I do like about Star Wars military forces is that they arnt actually all that competent.I know this comes from Lucas lack of knowledge on military matters but it actually fits and makes sense in universe
Not really Lucas's fault. The movies alone are vague enough you can assume whatever you need for it to make sense. The writers of the expanded lore are to blame for the incoherence.
I have spent far too long trying to research this too. It makes literally zero sense. Sometimes Corps aren't actually corps (See: 41st) but are called a corps because they want to. There just isn't any standardisation and it is unfathomably irritating. I am so glad that I am not the only person who understands how annoying this all is.
8:35, personally, i never assumed that when rex was referring too the 501st as a whole as a battalion, but talking about that specific sub-unit of the legion that was assigned too the umbara campaign.
I think the reason for missing clone marshal commanders is because Palawans were used in this role. An example of this is that Ahsoka Tano seemed to be referred to as commander by the clones and when seen in context they seem to be using it as her rank not just as the person in command. There are admittedly a lot of problems with the structure of the GAR but I think some of this is that the whole war was started early so units were slotted in haphazardly rather than as a more unified structure too make up for losses in the first battle.
So, a few things. - The 41st, despite being referred to as a corps, is actually only a legion, and Commander Gree is a senior commander, not a marshal commander. - Gree was never in charge of all of those units simultaneously, as each one of them had their own commanding officers (Captain Green Leader and Commander Gett for example), Gree was just shown to be the overarching commander for thise units during various battles. During the attack on the Tranquility only Gree, Green Leader, and Green Company were were present, so Gree was in charge because he was the highest ranking clone officer there. During the battle of Kashyyyk only Sarlacc Battalions A and B were present, but Gree was once again the highest clone officer present for the battle so he was in charge of those two units and their battalion commanders. - Cody is not, and has never been in charge of the Third, that list is simply incorrect. The largest unit Cody is in charge of is the 7th Sky Corps. - The 501st WAS a battalion at the beginning of the war, but was shortly reorganized into a legion. - It is almost guaranteed that all of these units had their own correct commanders, but since most of the high ranking commanders were graduates of the ARC Training Program, they were often brought along on missions by their Jedi generals due to their battlefield prowess and tactical skills.
@rynonymouss My evidence is years and years of studying the GAR, reading many MANY pieces of source material such as novels, comics, encyclopedias, etc., writing a list of quite literally every single clone trooper ever created by Lucasfilm (and I do mean EVERY clone trooper) and figuring out those clones' ranks and what units they belong to based on pre-existing information, and also just having a VERY good understanding of the GAR as a whole.
@rynonymouss Small change here. You were right about Gree being a marshal commander, as he does lead the 9th, but I stand the everything else I stated: - The other units within the 41st all have their own commanding officers (i.e. Green Leader is the captain of Green Company. - The 41st itself has specifically been referred to as a legion in numerous sources, and it being a legion is quite literally the only way that it would fit into the 9th. - Cody has never once, in any source, been listed as part of the leadership of the Third, he has only ever been states to lead the 7th and the 212th, so the list you used is just wrong on that. - The 501st was, at least in the current canon, originally a battalion that was later reorganized into a legion a few months into the war.
@@CloneCommanderCrater1102 That is fair, although I think TCW gets it wrong itself a few times (as I mentioned on Umbara where Rex says "every man in this battalion", i highly doubt he is referring to a specific battalion within the 501st. Instead I think its a script error)
@rynonymouss Oh, I'm not disagreeing with you there, that is a constant problem in Star Wars with characters saying the wrong unit type or the wrong rank. It always makes it annoying for those of us who are super knowledgeable of the lore. Also, in that instance with Rex calling it a battalion you are completely right because the 501st had been a legion for a long time at that point.
During the Battle of Umbara, Obi-Wan refers to the 501st’s clones as “Anakin’s Battalion”. My guess is that simply a battalion-sized group of clones from the 501st assisted the 212th in taking Umbara.
you have more than one commander leading an entire legion. rex is just a captain leading hundred up to max 180 aka a company . can he be a special captain like leading an elite praetorian company ? yes but doesnt change the fact that from his rank he is way more off a frontline captain fighting in the thick of things not really having the skills to operate large scale units
@@CullodenCowboyYes. Rancor Battalion had commanders Colt, Havoc, and Blitz, and Gree was in the same unit as Luminara Unduli's padawan, Barriss Offee.
@@CullodenCowboyYes, actually, every large unit has multiple commanders of varying degrees. The 501st Legion has Appo, Vill, Bow, and a number of unnamed commanders seen in various comics. The 327th Star Corps has Bly, A'den, Faie, Deviss, and a few unnamed commanders from comics. The 9th Assault Corps has Gree, Gett, Grey, and multiple unnamed commanders. The Coruscant Guard has Fox, Thorn, Thire, and Stone. There are also MANY other large units that have various named commanders in them. Also, Jedi commanders and clone commanders have been shown to work together in clone units before such as Jedi Commander Caleb Dume and Clone Commander Grey as well as Jedi Commander Cal Kestis and the 13th Battalion clone commander.
I cannot thank you enough, I've always wanted to know how the GAR works on a tactical/logistical level; this could be useful for writing more militarily accurate stories about the clones
I like to think, that during the first Battle of Geonosis, where everthing seems to be thrown in, many of the Clones in leading roles were KIA (may it be on ground, or in space). With the need of fast movement and adaptation from the GAR, the politics in the Republic and shift there through the sudden appearance of one imginable large army (in the eyes of the senators at the time), in combination with putting Jedi in leading roles wich they had no clue about, they more or less "winged it" and tried to make some kind of military structure from the rest, thus creating that abomination of a "chain of command" and no real time to fix it.
There's also conflicting info regarding some things I've heard. Such as, a Legion is apparently enough to conquer a world, despite only being ~9k clones ~16k with supports and all assets (heavy weapons, vehicles, air support, etc). And all of that fits on a single Acclamator. Or, if things are calculated right, about 5-8 Venators. A Jedi General, at minimum, should also be in command of a Squadron Fleet. That's 3-4 Sections, or 12-36 "warships", plus support ships (not sure if this is included in previous number). So this could be anywhere between 9 Venators/Acclamators, to 48 Consulars. Though I'm guessing a proper balanced Squadron should be 3-4 Venators, 1-2 Acclamators, 2-3 Pelta's, 4-8 Arquitens, and 6-12 Consular Chargers. And yet in majority of conflicts, by the lowest ranking Jedi Generals (fresh Jedi Knights), we see them with, say, only 3-4 Venators, and a single legion spread between them. Sometimes only a regiment, or battalion. Even before Venators were deployed, they were flying maybe 3-4 Acclamators, with the same Legion quantity. So many inconsistencies and no balance. Especially when you consider that, supposedly, a High Jedi General (eg: Windu/Yoda) should have had an Armada at their disposal, leading an entire war theater. And that's just for battles and numbers. What about the support ships? what about ship repair times and replacement times? are they going back to shipyards for maintenance, or repairing in the field? What about reinforcements for their legions, are they getting replacement troopers all the time, or are their legions only the size of a few battalions from constantly losses?
This is a bit of an out there comparison but at 4:35 when you discuss the 9th assault and 41st Elite. It puts me in the mind of the U.S. Army’s 2nd and 7th infantry division command structure. The units that are stateside are put under the command of the 7th infantry division while nominally being units of the second infantry division (they wear the patch and call themselves the 2ID). As soon as these units are sent overseas, it is back under the command of 2ID HQ out of Korea. It is a little confusing and almost certainly not intentional but it is a way to think about Unduli’s forces.
I mean the structure is similar to what our military is. For example I was in the Air Force, in the air force from top to bottom is Secaf, HAF, MAJCOMS, NAFs, Wings, Groups, and Squadrons. You can be a Colonel for a Squadron, or you can be a Colonel for an entire wing. And that's just the basics of it. In reality it kind of looks like a family tree, kind of what's depicted in the video. Some Majcoms will have bases spread out the entire country/world, where another majcom will only have one base.
My biggest problem with the GAR is that clones are also used to man starships and for logistics instead of using conscripts from the Republics local militias. The strenghts of clones are completely wasted here.
@@papapalps2415 so the whole time the galaxy had ppl already trained with naval experience and skills but the republic never used them? I understand why they didn't use regular enlisted foot soldiers in the clone wars since training enough will be too slow for the cis droids, but why didnt they use already trained captains and other navy ranks in the clone wars who already had training, a question that couldve easily be answered if they just showed regular ship crews not clones piloting the venators
@@billross9132 ....Uh, what? Dude, one of the main side characters in TCW is Yularen, lul. In addition, there are plenty of non-clone officers, mainly naval but also army, that we see in the new and old canon's, up to and including familar names like Pellaeon, Zsinj, Needa, and so on. A LARGE portion of the Empire's officer base is directly grandfathered from the Republic.
I feel like Starwars is a series where people go: "Oh it's intentional that things are so convoluted, Palpatine made it that way to make his takeover easer" the most but in reality it's the writers not knowing god damn anything about actual military structure lmao.
To be fair, this makes the org charts for real life operations like TORCH and god forbid, Wellington’s pensinsular army look simple. British commanders of army, corps, division, and brigade like Wellington often technically commanded their own regiments, which themselves deployed battalions to entirely separate theaters and had parallel logistics, traditions, doctrine, and even equipment with every other regiment.
Obviously it's standars for commanders to keep certain sub units under their direct command. Likely to carry out more complicated tasks so the commander can ensure it's done properly
I’ve always just figured Cody and Obi-Wan have these high ranks but they also have their combat ranks. Like their attack battalion is the one they command but Cody’s overall role was Marshall commander. He was in the battlefield so he had to have his own legion and lower divisions too but he was the highest ranking clone outside of that too. Kind of like he’s the “team captain” of a sports team. He partakes in everything but he’s also in charge.
I think Cody being in charge of the missing Sector army is implicit, clones are bred to fight so even when in a high position of power it makes sense they'd have personal corps, battalion, company, etc, just like Gree, when in the field they don't tag along with a random group, they take their own who they know personally, still being able to give orders for the whole group but any clone that isn't in the fight could be seen as a waste. Oversight and logistics makes a lot more sense to be covered by admirals when they're floating in orbit above the army. Warefare changes with that kind of direct observation and communication
Even in the U.S. Army, you have things like the Headquarters Company. Which is mainly an administrative unit that exists on paper to have somewhere to assign everyone with the unit it's within who aren't attached to any other subsidiary unit, to be fair, but they do result in nominally circular command structures and captains potentially in charge of higher ranks. This is dealt with both by the practical reality of not being able to order around your boss and by limiting the authority of the company commander to their specific duties. And in real life you do also get things like a CO taking direct command of a forward component while leaving the rest of their unit with its XO. (I'm thinking of a particular river crossing during WWII where the CO of a battalion went with the troops who established a beachhead on the far side of the river, leaving most of the unit behind with the XO.) Possibly in the show we're mainly shown smaller units when higher-level officers who at good at field combat (i.e., Jedi) are with them and have taken direct command.
The 501st had a commander - Ahsoka. I guess thats why Rex never got the position until the end of the war. (And because it's sounds cool and makes it easier to distinguish him from cody)
I have always assumed to an extent part of the reason we see so much fluctuation in command of the Grand Army of the Republic was because the Jedi would be deployed as needed and in certain cases would take over command of clones in the area. And that because of losses during the war you had higher ranking commanders a lot of time filling in the role of lower ranking squad or unit Commanders wow non clone officers were able to fill in those higher ranking roles. Which would explain why we have leadership that would be considered like a three-star General in modern times fighting on the front line. Also the Jedi might have been just too much of a valuable combat resource to allow to sit behind the lines and command. Great video. Consider me subscribed
Another big problem is the Role designation of each unit does not seem to reflect its actual type. An Assault and Attack Unit should have different make ups for example. Assault is more of a dedicated Frontal assault unit like an Mechanized infantry unit, pioneers with flame and other special weapons for flushing out destroying fortifications, plenty of IFVs and fire support vehicles. Attack sounds like a more basic all purpose unit geared towards the assault role but not specifically. I’m guessing IFV heavy but without the specialized combat pioneers, and fire support vehicles. Others like the “recon corps” sound like they would be loaned off larger forces as recon specialist, operating the faster vehicles and special equipment that THIER unit type implies but not a larger unit that would be kept together other then for equipment and training purposes.
Okay, it definitely doesn't _look_ functional. But at least it kinda was. The Galactic Empire's whole structure was so bad, that with the disappearance of Sidious, the entire government and military collapsed into basically a bunch of warlords. I'd rather deal with the GAR's functioning but absolutely messy structure than whatever was going on with the Imperial Military.
The misspelling of "lieutenant" and "sergeant" are a little funny lol I realize that we pronounce them a little differently across the pond, but we spell them the same way.
TCW and Pre-TCW Clone Wars should not be mentioned together. TCW writers had no idea how the GAR was structured. Plus the show retconned everything. An example: Legion was commanded by a Clone Senior Commander. So why was Rex the second in command of the 501st? Appo was the Senior Commander while in the show he was a sergeant. A Cpt only commands one company. A legion has 1 Senior Commander, 4 Regimental Commanders and 16 Battalion Cmndr so Rex was nowhere near.
Rex technically wasn't second-in-command of the 501st. Ahsoka was. She was the Senior Commander. Rex was only ever officially in command of Torrent Company, but him being Anakin's clone liasion officer, combined with Ahsoka being very much inexperienced when she first took her command, meant that Rex was de-facto second-in-command of the 501st.
@@occam7382 A legion had numerous commanders who outranked Rex. Padawans weren't Senior Commanders. Padawans were Regimental Commanders. A Clone Senior Commander outranked the Padawans. Btw TCW 501st and Ahsoka were part of the retcon.
Basically, part of the reason its a mess is that Clone Wars is so poorly written and integrates so badly with canon that before Disney's editions you could damn well say its a non-canon spin off.
It sounds like a lot of these appointments were made on an ad hoc basis, rather than being the permenant established orbat. The Kaminoans probably had one idea of how the army should be structured and then the jedi changed things up according to their needs, and being powerful space wizards who can both conduct special operations and strategy they likely restructured command structures to suit the flexibility they needed.
Nice video I can tell you put a lot of work in it, your channel got huge potential! I was suprised to see that you dont have a huge community yet. Dont listen to the haters keep going!
Where can I find this chart I’ve ran clone units for ARMA 3 in the past and am thinking of doing so once again in the future. If not I can use this for flavor as a Zeus when I make ORBATs for my missions
Commander Crees position makes sense if you consider the command structure of its units to be a part of themselves so to say. So He and Unduli would command the 9th assault corps alongside Cree. The main part of this unit is the 41st elite, stationed at the center of operations, so where the two would focus anyway, and containing the 41st Scout Batallion, directly surrounding the two officers as an elite squad during operations to assist them when they are going in. So they technically command all at the same time
Rex wasn’t referring to the whole 501st as a battalion he was referring to their specific battalion that contained those specific 501st clones in the immediate area my interpretation at least
I think you're overlooking a largely important factor in this: wars take place over time. This graphic should also include a timeline as many units may have been completely wiped out or suffered so many casualties that they would have to be completely restructured. Even with a seemingly infinite supply of clones, these units would have to adapt based on what they were doing and how much they had to work with at the time. So you're of course going to have a lot of redundancies. A good chunk of these groups were probably put together for a single operation and then disbanded.
I always assumed that because Skywalker wasn't a master he only led a company and that the rest of the 501st legion was doing something else, until Order 66 was issued and then Palpatine gave him command of the full legion.
There are some errors in this video. I am wondering if you have consulted sources like _The Essential Guide to Warfare_ or if you based your analysis on this other creator's diagram, which also seems to contain a few mistakes. The main thing to understand is that the unique nature of the chain-of-command demanding that Jedi outrank clone troopers mean that even a Jedi Padawan with little battle experience is superior in authority to a clone marshal commander. This is known from countless sources going back to 2003. We see often in situations where a Padawan's master is missing, command then devolves to them. If we had to equate the GAR ranks to NATO ranks, it is as follows: • Jedi High General (OF-10) = marshal • Jedi General (OF-9) = general • Jedi Commander (OF-8), often a Jedi Padawan = lieutenant general • Clone marshal commander (OF-7) = major general • Clone senior commander (OF-6) = brigadier general • Clone regimental commander (OF-5) = colonel • Clone battalion commander (OF-4) = lieutenant colonel • Clone major (OF-3) = major • Clone captain (OF-2) = captain • Clone lieutenant (OF-1) = lieutenant One of the main errors in your video is the claim that Cody technically outranks Anakin. This is not true. You have to understand that the system is adapted to accommodate the prerequisite for Jedi to outrank clones despite clone officers' superior military experience. As a result, even though Anakin Skywalker outranks Cody, he is given direct command over a smaller unit, the 501st Legion, as the subordinate to Obi-Wan Kenobi. Clone marshal commanders like Cody are in official command of corps, like you suggested, but they also have the duty to be the main military advisor to the Jedi General. This is just the realistic development of Jedi needing the expertise of the clone commanders. Furthermore, Jedi and clone commanders certainly can take over a direct leadership role over a smaller unit within their army or corps. This appears to be the cause of some confusion in your video, as in why Obi-Wan commands both the Third Systems Army and the 7th Sky Corps and the 212th Attack Battalion. This isn't really so complicated. The superior officer may exercise direct command over a smaller unit being used for an operation at their discretion, that's all. We have seen often that they have even led small special ops missions. The diagram is in error for labelling the 3rd Systems Army under the joint command of Obi-Wan and Cody. Cody serves as his chief military advisor due to the lack of Jedi's expertise in military strategy and the need for a liaison over the clones. But as a marshal commander, Cody's official duty is to command a corps. Another mistake in your video is to disregard sector armies for system armies. The other way around would've made more sense. Systems armies are not well-discussed in the sources while _The Essential Guide to Warfare_ explains the significance of sector armies at length. The sector armies are equivalent to real-world military commands (like USCENTCOM, USINDOPACOM, etc.) They are important because their jurisdictions correspond to what would become military governorships under the Galactic Empire, ruled by Moffs and Grand Moffs. Each sector army is divided into 4 corps, but in practice, only 1 corps of each sector army was used as a mobile offensive operations unit while the other 3 would be decentralized into smaller regiments, brigades, and companies and used to garrison local worlds. The 9th Assault Corps should be under the command by Yoda, not Luminara Unduli. (I believe Wookieepedia is in error here). The confusion between the 9th Assault Corps and 41st Elite Corps seems to have been a genuine mistake on Lucasfilms' part, as the 41st Elite Corps has been described as a _legion_ within the 9th Assault Corps despite its name. In the Episode III Visual Dictionary, the clone trooper labelled as belonging to the 41st Elite Corps is not one based on Kashyyyk, but TCW exacerbated the confusion by referring to the troops under Gree the 41st as opposed to the 9th. The most logical way to fix this confusion in my opinion would be to have the 9th Assault Corps and 41st Elite Corps be parallel units in the same sector army. Perhaps in this case, two corps operated as mobile attack units instead of one.
Luminara is actually officially in charge of a portion of the 9th alongside Yoda. Multiple Jedi being placed in charge of separate portions of large units is nothing new. Take the 91st, for example, it's broken up under the command of at least three different Jedi, Stass Allie, Adi Gallia, and Mace Windu. Also, the 41st is officially referred as a legion under the 9th in most sources, but somewhere along the way Lucasfilm also decided to list it as a corps, despite it not really working.
This was way too good of a job. Great job, mate. I can’t wait for the structure of the CIS. Also know as, Dooku, Grievous, generals who all get killed, and AI.
The Tex battalion comment I think was just in reference to the division of men at the base, espesvially with Obi Wan's assault on the capitol, Id assume most of the 501st was under his command, with Rex's battalion being given the mission to attack and capture the air base.
As an American it was interesting hearing you call them Leftenants. In all my American source books said “Lieutenant” under Captain, and it makes me wonder if that was localized in different books elsewhere? If so, which one is canon?
Because he seems to be british or canadian and they pronounce Lieutenant as "Leftenant", but they spell the same. Don't know why he chose to spell it wrong in the video.
I think that you raise some good points about clones not being the right rank to command certain brigades, corps or btn, etc., but that does have some real-life precedent. During WW2, many of the divisions that saw constant combat were severely under-strength, to the point that the highest ranked officer in a company might be a Lieutenant (or some equivelant, and this does apply to allied divisions). Sometimes a Sgt might be forced to take command of an entire platoon until a replacement officer reached the front lines. There are also cases of Sgts taking command of a platoon while they are in the process of being promoted to being an officer. Now, this probably is just a case of the writers of TCW not having much knowledge on supplemental material of TCW, but they did unintentionally do something that makes sense when you consider that the GAR was spread thin, and probably had trouble getting replacement officers for every unit. Therefore it would stand to reason that the GAR High Command would only supply replacement officers to units that didn't have a capable enough officer already commanding it in place of an officer of the right rank.
Another thing is that while Cody was the Commander of the 7th SC, he usually took direct command of the 212th AB during an operation. Again, this is mostly just an example of the writers not knowing enough lore. But still, Rex did the same thing with Torrent Company, and Gree did the same with Green Company. Basically every Commander or officer in charge of a regiment or larger formation led a smaller unit while on the battlefield. You could say this was either due to a shortage of officers, a preference to lead from the front, or just faulty writing. The system works, you just have to account for things that aren't as obvious, such as what I said above about units being under-strength.
rex is a bit like a centurion of the first cohort or a praetorian cohort that leads a special century meanwhile appo is the primus pilus or the camp prefect who does actually way more big picture commanding not just in the thick of things
It could sort of make sense if you consider that the GAR was activated only partway into its creation, some subunits and formations being deployed before their larger organic units were ready, and random Jedi pulling units away to defend special interests or do certain missions. Then when the wider formations were somewhat ready some of the relatively junior officers suddenly massively outweigh their supposed seniors in combat experience, and have better connections to their Jedi superiors, who for the most part hold Orbats in causal disdain.
The confusion was because jedi chose clones they liked and made them their assistant. Rex didn't have a permanent command so much as just accompanying Anakin
Always found it funny when thinking about it, that most of the time afaik it’s shown as a Jedi general, his clone commander, and maybe a deputy, running these units. Esp at the corps level or sector army level, one would think that with the area covered by these units, actually managing and commanding the corps/sector army would be mentally impossible for 2-3 people with the amount of stuff/information they need to handle in a practical timeframe. Could be cool if they would dive more into the staff’s they’d probably have (could probably be battalion sized for the corps) imo
It's FuNNy... Star Trek isn't about war. It dives into the exploration of space the final frontier, culture and civilization, science and technological development, archeology, politics even, philosophy and self betterment... But it's creator Gene Roddenberry made sure to get many facts in check, especially scientific fact (which makes Star Trek's technology very believable and seems real), including how Starfleet's organization is structured like the Navy. So basically Star Trek, a show about exploration, science, philosophy, and humanity, has better and more accurate militaristic qualities. Cheers! = D
Does anyone have a link to where I can find this chart, I want to look at it and try to make up units to turn the clone army into an actual functional organization
I think it was Ahsoka who was in charge of the 501st, with Rex in charge of Torrent company and Appo in charge of the other one. On Umbara, which was an entire planet scale invasion both were present
Officially speaking, Ahsoka was commander-in-chief of the 501st Brigade. Anakin commanded them as a Jedi General, while Rex officially only commanded Torrent Company. However, Rex was also Anakin's clone liasion officer, which (along with Ahsoka's laughable inexperience when she first got her command) meant that although he only technically commanded Torrent, Rex was basically in charge of the 501st for all intents and purposes.
I’ve actually been working on fixing the Clone Army. I kept system and sector armies and I increased the size of the Clone Army since 3.2 mil is WAY too low for galactic scale battle
You’ll never be like Geetsly, Smugglers Cantina or Generation Tech. Stop making videos
I find your lack of faith disturbing
Stop posting comments.
Been a while since I've seen anything this pathetic. Get a grip.
Pin of shame 🤡
Why put down other creators?
When the Hapsburg family tree makes more sense than your army’s chain of command, you know you’re doing something wrong
_Sweet Home Alabama Plays_
@@ShadowReaper-pu2hx it’s more like sweet home Saarland with the Habsburgs (Saarland is Germanys Alabama)
You mean a circle?
idk I always thought circles were pretty simple
@@epicassassin8502more like an infinite 8
What a thousand years of no military does to a mf
Lmao
This is why sometimes you have to double-check the desert for WMDs.
@@ShadowReaper-pu2hxlol😂
Normally it's the really old military organisation where things get weird!
Maybe so, but Looking at the Military structure of the Old Republic, like in SWTOR, the Republic military wasn't that off really. It looked more like our Real life military then the Clone Army.
There were Corps too, but they were more devised in Armor, Anti-armor, Special Forces, Elite Forces, Standard Forces, Anti-Sith Battalions, Aerial, Marine, Navy,...
And jedi were not in charge of Legions/Batallions... Instead some Jedi Admirals/Generals were in charge of Fleets, Like the First Fleets, the Expeditionary fleets, Defense Fleets,...
And the ranking system was more honest, having Generals, Admirals, Commanders and Supreme Commanders at the top of each division.
The Old Republic military looked more like a ACTUAL Military then the Clone Army in my opinion.
Star Wars has often proven that Old things are sometimes better then New things.
This video should be called “what happens when you and your writers have no clue about military formations and scaling,” making the clone army so small for a galactic war against a massive automated army is stupid writing in itself. Then they tried to fix this by having Dooku handicap the droid army
Edit: the GAR is still my all time favorite military in Star Wars, I just wished their structure and numbers were more suited for the big war they were created to fight. Even though they were supposed to win
The separatist hierarchy is a mess 💀💀💀
Like. What does Commander mean in that army?
@@legoroan9866 That's cause the seps are an alliance of different bodies like militias and corporations. They get to be hodgepodge anyway because droid armies command themselves and are more disposable AND less complex in terms of strategy, tactics and general doctrine.
They probably just give any fool who is slightly import and a few thousand droids and some factories then let him figure it all out. The tactical droids will take care of the hard stuff!
@@legoroan9866you mean tactical droids there just droids smart enough for strategising.
Atari wars was never hard sci fi anyways
@@atari947 The creator literally describes it as not sci fi, it's space fantasy. Like Halo.
too many cooks spoil the broth, especially if none of them understand military organization (or scale, 3 million troops in the entire GAR makes it smaller than the German army in 1941)
Unless is a unit meant a squad
its touched on in the Karin Traviss republic commandoes novels, that if the CIS is actually a trillion droids, or even a billion, they could probably stand on each other's shoulders and reach coruscant, much less drown the clones in a wave of steel. If the clone numbers are accurate, the Republic is literally not feeling a war at all, especially considering these people are not even recruited citizens. There simply isnt enough jedi, much less command capable jedi, to make the army any bigger, and since the conflict is already orchestrated, there isnt a need to bring in normal civillian or other military, non jedi types to lead. Defeats the purpose of it being a long form of a great Jedi noose. A civilization at war can usually field up to 10% of its population to fight a war, and even with half the galaxy no longer paying taxes, the republic was in no hurry to have anyone else do the bleeding, not humans, not aliens, and the seperatists specifically have a robot army for the same purpose of not raining new uncontrolled people.
Yea the number of clones have never made sense compared to the droids. While we can sorta wave this as the separatists only put the minimum in garrisons but still. Honestly if the war wasn't run by idiots and sidious you could arguably use the droids as a great guerrilla force. Imagine the nva but they dont sleep or eat, a war of attrition would ruin the republic
@@maxwellgarner3445But on the other hand, its later shown in TCW that funding the army was a major drain on government resources to the point that Coruscant wasn't able to properly function since resources that the mega city planet needed to import to keep running were being rerouted to the war effort. The idea of a galactic scale government going into major debt to fund an army of 3 million troops is ridiculous.
@mizu7662 the republic economy is in shambles because of papa Palpatine loosing the entire galactic gdp at the blackjack tables, very tragic.
Nah it's probably the massive trade interdiction and that the core is fed by the midrim, the same midrim that's on fire and blocaded
My headcannon is that the Jedi kinda a tore a coherent system apart. They are used to operate in an ad-hoc fashion, assembling groups of Jedi for specific tasks and determining authority mission to mission. So they were not used to operating in a military hierarchy and frequently detached stuff as they saw fit, themselves taking direct command of increasingly small tactical operations. Many of those units would become fully independant entities over time and the entire structure very fluid and confiusing.
I like this explanation
Seems to me like it was incoherent to start with, even if you remove Jedi from the equation the military structure makes little sense. Say what you will about the Jedi, but they seem to be pretty much the only people around who even could lead these forces; we barely hear of any non-Jedi generals in the GAR and that's probably because the galaxy is almost entirely devoid of proper military personnel. To add to that, the GAR was basically organized overnight by a government that had been demilitarized for a millennium, the Jedi were probably the only organization the Republic could turn to for military command.
@@alaskamark4562 This is true, but...there were enough people that finished military training and could lead an army in galaxy, and would join with no questions for the right price. All structures existed long before the GAR, and even persisted in empire times, using its funds to train all these stormtroopers and officers.
I can hear the German officers complaining about lack of Doctrine adherence from here lol.
@@alaskamark4562That’s a TCW retardation. In the old EU lore there were more than enough other generals and the like, as well as people forget the GAR weren’t just the clones but planetary defence forces.
Lol it would've been hilarious if Anakin gave Cody a command and the dude would point out he is higher ranked
probabily clones are like enlisted IRL and jedi are officers. so a CSM cant order around a 2nd LT eventhough a CSM is way more important.
@@DrBluefoxAnd the 2nd Lieutenant can order the CSM around. Atleast until the nearest higher ranked officer sees him and kicks his ass.
The true genius of this military structure is that the enemy isn't sure who they should try to assassinate
Do they assassinate Cody or Anakin? Cody outranks him but Anakin is a jedi, what about all those green units? Surely they aren't all commanded by Gree? But if not then where are their commanding officers? How do you kill an anonymous officer?
Also do they assassinate cody or the clone A who somehow is higer rank than cody but cody has another clone B he commands that also commands the clone A?
This reminds me of the quote about the american army in world war 2.
It's funny how a franchise that literally has "war" in its title doesn't know shit about pretty much anything military related
Yep, and it's one thing when it's 1 guys vision, but as soon as you have entire teams of people you think they could have brought a guy on board that knows military stuff
But then there's Republic Commando.
Tbh it's always been like that
The main antagonist forces can't even shoot straight and the stories more ABT the rise and fall of a space Messiah than war
It's weird because George Lucas did hire people but iirc only to make the movements of the clone army in the third movie more realistic.
you can go thank disney for fucking that up lol. The expanded universe was extremely good at drawing from IRL militaries and implementing them into the galaxy (ex. the imperial warlord era after return of the jedi, and literally every piece of clone wars material prior to the 2008 TV show that fucked it all up.)
This makes the Imperial Army''s command structure look compentent in comparison.
lol
Uh, what...?
to be fair that was sheevy boy just throwing ranks everywhere to keep the little people at each other's throats
I always thought that the reason Rex calls the 501st a battalion on Umbara is because only one battalion of the 501st was deployed there, while the other battalions of the 501st were elsewhere
That would make more sense. Had the full legion been deployed on Umbara, we would have seen a much larger clone presence there.
Jedi immediately becoming Generals and their Padawans being given the rank of Commander (even if they are like 11 years old) is some of the most mind boggling world building l have ever witnessed.
Edit: I may have worded this wrong to the point that people don’t understand my point exactly: I know that this is the whole point of the Jedi Order being hypothetical with their ways and such. I get that. The part that im confused about is that the GAR just allows this to happen in the first place. Like, l understand that in a hypothetical scenario that Politicians and CEOs of private companies would want to command armies in war, l totally understand that. What confuses me is the fact that armies would just agree to these Politicians and CEOs leading armies into battle. I don’t understand why the GAR allows this to happen in the first place. If that makes more sense
I actually feel like this actually makes sense because it just shows how incredibly overwhelmed the Jedi Council was with the war. Yes, the structure of the GAR is incredibly stupid and giving Command to Jedi without any actual military training is just naive but it makes sense in a world, that hasn't seen any large scale war for centuries.
@@floriandiem1223 We see in The Phantom Menace through Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon that the Jedi are more like Diplomatic Enforcers and they say they are Peacekeepers. That is totally fine. But that doesn’t make them able to lead tens of thousands of soldiers on multiple battlefield and how to manage billions of credits of military hardware.
Lets imagine a hypothetical scenario if Qui-Gon survived The Phantom Menace somehow. Can we imagine this character knowing how to deploy Special Forces units behinf enemy lines for Infiltration, demolition, assassination or extraction missions? Can we imagine him knowing how to use a Battalion of Star Fighters to maintain Air Superiority over an occupied city? Can we imagine him knowing the best locations for Scouts to traverse through so they can report enemy positions to artillery crews?
None of this makes any sense for Jedi to be Generals of. And l cant believe that 11 year olds are given high ranks as well
@@princeblasian3735 No of course not but that's exactly the point. The jedi don't know jack shit about how to lead a war but they are too afraid to pass command to someone else, that's why we see them making all of these stupid decisions. It actually makes sense from a lore pov for them to be absolute idiots when it comes to military planning
@@princeblasian3735 I think the Jedis being generals is one of those things that made sense in the context of the movies, but got way out of hand in the EU. In the movies, it serves the purpose of showing the militarization of the Jedi, places them near the clones during Order 66, and explains why the disciplined clones resented their untrained commanders. However, once the EU started placing them in command of a bunch of different units of varying sizes, as well as having their skills in battle vary from story to story, it starts to fall apart. For example, Ki Adi Mundi is simultaneously a sociopathic idiot who sends his army into the meat grinder on Muunilist, and a brilliant and caring commander on Geonosis. The whole concept just got way out of hand as more and more writers got involved.
@@buttbuttson737 Mundi is a good man when you actually fight next to him, but from a distance he leads poorly. He's more of a natural warrior than a commander.
I think the biggest thing is that they didn't want to focus on the organizational structure, they chose to just show us the units that happened to be serving aside the main characters we watched. We just don't have canon information on those, which some of the units mentioned on the chart I noticed aren't canon either, anymore at least.
It seems like CW season 7 tried to address the total absence of a chain of command by making Jesse a Lieutenant retroactively, by extending the same logic we can assume Waxer and Boil are also Lieutenants, as are Echo and Fives, since they're all shown to have roughly the same relationship with their respective commanders, the introduction of Vaughn also helped clear up a bit of the confusion because it was obvious Vaughn had prior command experience within the 501st, we just hadn't seen him on-screen before. Implying there were other companies off-screen doing other things commanded by clone officers we don't know or haven't seen yet.
Still, that said, if you assume all of the ARCs were Lieutenants commanding platoons(we don't even see them commanding units at any point except for Jesse briefly after order 66) we only ever see enough officers/NCOs to fill out the senior command of maybe a small company, let alone a _brigade_
Like, if Jesse and Fives and co were LTs and therefore platoon commanders, then where are all of the captains and majors commanding the companies and battalions? or their sergeants directing the squads? If Anakin didn't introduce Rex as his "first in command" to Krell, I would have assumed there was an unnamed commander always offscreen doing more important things who was _actually_ in charge of the 501st, and Rex was just the CO of _ghost company_ specifically.
Everything would have made so much more sense if they had just made it clear we're only seeing the command teams of company or battalion sized units on-screen
TCW is one of the main guilty things that make military structures a complete joke in star wars thats why i ignore it in the military aspect. somehow a mere captain leads the entire legion i would be fine if rex was something like an elite captain leading the 501st praetorian company but no
Small corrections: The Bad Batch arc in The Clone Wars S7 confirms that Echo is a corporal, and Rex was in charge of Torrent Company, not Ghost.
I think it works if you consider a "Command Company". The Commander of each Corps/Brigade obviously has overall command, but they also have a personal Company to protect/secure the Commander and act as their reserve
@@maccaronich true but command units don't generally lead the attack every single time
Echo, Fives and Jesse were all ARC troopers. So whilst they may have held rank, it's daubtfull they had any day-to-day command duties. Same concept as most special forces being sergeants in real life.
Also Waxer was officially a platoon commander, with the rank of clone Lieutenant during the battle of Umbara.
2:10 in legends ranks were:
Trooper, Corporal, sergeant, sergeant major, 2nd LT, 1st LT, captain, major, battalion commander, regimental commander, senior commander, and marshal commander
With Jedi holding either Jedi Commander, General, Senior General, or High General
Also ranks in the actual military have a set ranking system like the way star wars is.
But rank ≠ structure.
The actual structure of the military is in a way like this. A colonel can be in charge of a Squadron, Wing, or group levels. A squadron is between 80-200 people typically. A wing being 2,000-4000, and etc. And I was in the military so I should know
Frankly even when Lucas was running this its clear that they have a very vague sense of how a military is structured and just toss around terms like army battlion legion and so on.
my theory is that the mid-level clone commanders were interchangeable between different positions. this would explain some of the issues of having clone commanders being in charge of several organizations rather than those having permanent independent HQ.
Rex also gets expressly promoted to "commander" in season 7. before then, Ahsoka was the commander of Rex's battallion. when she came back, the legion was just split into one half for mandalore (the 332nd division, there being a 332nd company was a star wars blog error) and one half for coruscant. this means either division was roughly 2 regiments and Rex would have commanded at a higher degree than even his promotion. Ahsoka doesn't count at this point because she is just a "tactical advisor".
Exactly it's just like the actual military
To clarify the 501st name thing, it was the 501st clone battalion during the clone war, but the 501st legion during Imperial era
That’s kind of silly then. Especially in a galactic sense, that’s like numbering your companies or platoons with unique names.
@@Kazako83 Nah, it's a reference to a real life charity organization
@@Kazako83unique names for units is fine as long as the chain of command isnt mucked up. Can often be good for both soldiers and civilian morale with famous honoured units or special forces.
See the irl Coldstream Guards, Black Watch, etc etc
@@Rynewulf those are Regiments/Brigades usually or higher no? And a lot of them originate from when those units were the primary maneuver unit.
Unique unit names for every battalion would get rather tiring, hence is not really done outside of specialist units. Example, the USSR had nearly 600 divisions at its height. Assuming they’re all rifle divisions (which they weren’t but hey) that’s 3 Regiments with 3 Battalions. That’s gonna be 5400 unique “xxth rifle battalion” you’re going to have.
It’s not impossible I guess, but I’d rather have, say 1st Battalion/266th Regiment or “1/266” on the command display them “504th/266th” or something, since I’d more readily identify that at a glance.
@@Kazako83 it's still done in modern militaries. In the US military nearly every level of organization has its own unique numerical identifier. It's apart of keeping a tradition and upholding morale. You can go to wikipedia for nearly every unit in the US military to see their history, unit awards, notable members, and symbols. Pretty much any unit in all branches commanded by a field grade officer will have it's own unique unit name.
Also, if ur wondering why Cody it’s often shown leading only the 212th it’s because it was his “favorite” unit. Cody was an action man, not someone that stood in the back lines giving orders to his troopers fighting in the frontlines he was right there w them, where the battle was taking place. It’s also pretty difficult to fight w a whole corp in the front lines, imagine 40k men standing next to each other… so he decided to take the lead of a specific battalion (the best of the corp ofc) giving specific orders to them while receiving information by the rest of the corp (by his seconds in command) and giving more general orders to it. You should also remember that the republic was often invading an entire planet, not just a city and it’s impossible to show a planet size invasion while also focusing on the main characters that’s why the entire 7th corp it’s never shown.
It’s not deployed all together, for it to happen there should be like a 40k droid army marching all together to a certain place to attack, in that case then,the entire 7th sky corp might be deployed in the same place and we would see 40k men with Cody in the front lines leading the whole corp but in specific the 212th. On the other hand if the republic was invading a planet full of separatist outposts scattered around the planet then the 7th would get “divided” into many different sub-units to conquer them and depending on the outpost Cody might decide to lead the 212th or maybe ghost company if the outpost isn’t that hard to conquer. The thing his Cody leads the 7th sky corp (and the third systems w obi) but since he can’t be everywhere on a planet at the same time he has to take the lead of a smaller unit (as I said previously while receiving l informations about the entirety of the corp and coordinating the forces. It’s impossible for a single man to fully control a 40k men army scattered around an entire planet that’s why there are ranks and everyone in the 7th is under Cody
Imagine if in real wars generals fought in the front lines that would be really bad no matter how good shots they would be. Thats why cody should just sit in the backline (preferably in orbit) looking at the situation issuing orders if it was meant to be realistic. But yes its meant to be cool so obviously the general is there in the front killing 100 battle droids a minute on a slow day.
This is completely unrealistic.
@@clintonoh3108 Star Wars isn’t realistic
@@pietrodesantis7765 Then say that, instead of coming up with a half arsed, illogical justification of an illogical situation.
@@clintonoh3108 yeah u’re right , I’m sorry if I forgot that you are actually the commander of the 7th sky corp and as a matter of fact you know what is logical to do in a battlefield. W that being said, if you don’t wanna hear talking about illogical explanations and illogical situations🤓☝️you shouldn’t have watched and commented a video where the author clearly came up with half arsed explanations. It’s well known that Star Wars isn’t logical and doesn’t follow the laws of physics, how is someone supposed to explain something that ISN’T logical in the first place with a logical explanation😂 The only way to make this work is to “came up with a half arsed, illogical justification of an illogical situation” if you want an in-universe explanation.
I don't know enough about the lore to say that for sure, but a very good reason the command chain could look like that would be this example: the commander of a legion might detach one bataillon or even just a company and put it directly under legion command. This usually happens when constituting a reserve or for a special task. So, in that case, it may appear that the legion commander is also the commander of a smaller unit, but, really, that smaller unit is just being placed directly under higher HQ command.
I think the issue of commanders being in charge of multiple levels of command is best explained as them being able to assume command of a smaller segment of the army for smaller ops. Because the Jedi are on the front lines so often, they need a consistent squad to accompany them that they can rely on. Therefore, Gree for example is in command of the entirety of the 9th assault corps and oversees all of their operations, but when Luminara needs to act directly he assumes control down the chain to the leader of the appropriately-sized segment for what Luminara requires, and presumably delegates his normal duties to a second in command in his absence. The lower segments in the chain probably have usual leaders that command them under normal circumsances, although a single company may be set aside as the personal company of the Jedi and only operate alongside them under the direct command of the Commander.
Great video. Also nice touch with Aayla Secura and Bly
Blyla shippers, report in
For all intents and purposes, Rex was the commander of the 501st. It's stated somewhere, can't remember canon or legends, that Anakin didn't officially promote Rex to commander because it would be to much paperwork. (Kenobi was his usual sarcastic, quippy self when he found out) and Rex can't do the paperwork to promote himself. Also, everything in the clone wars show is canon, so it is, in fact, the 501st battalion. Not legion. And the 332nd company was the entirety of Torrent company with some shinies. And we did have a coherent rank structure when AOTC came out, but it's gone to hell ever since.
Apo is the commander on the actual logistics and grand stragegy side. George just left him aside because of too many A names.
@@DIEGhostfish sure, but the first time we see appo in the clone wars, he's a Sargent.
IIRC that the reason Rex was a Captain was because Ahsoka was the 501st's Commander, as Anakin's Padawan.
@@Wolfsbane1100 Rex was captain for the first 3 months of the war, he could've been officially promoted before Ahsoka if became a thing.
Sidenote, do you have a fanfic or AO3 account? Read some really amazing stories by someone called wolfsbane.
@@Wolfsbane1100 There are units with both ranks.
I remember when I was way younger I tried making a doc with the layout of the GAR. This video articulates why after weeks of headaches I gave up that foolish idea and realized how hopeless of a task it is lmfao.
I think a lot of this has to do with the lack of context given with all of the units as well as the leadership strategies of the clone wars. The Jedi tended to lead from the front (which is mentioned on Umbara when Pong Krell did not) so it could be assumed that the head Jedi commander picked a unit that either they liked or the one they anticipated would see the heaviest combat and led the clones personally and left the other units some degrees of freedom while working towards the overall goal. I also think the 501st legion is mostly used as a literary device to give anakin a lot of responsibility and power while also conveying that he’s still Obi-Wan’s padawan and thus, has less power than Obi-Wan.
I think that the most Jedi Generals chose to deploy themselves even when most of their troops were not in combat and we also need to consider that most likely that there were specific units like a armor company, infantry company, or maybe a mixed company.
Exactly and basically all the commanders with multiple units in here are also known as frontliners in the same way. My guess is that those instances were they had command over a smaller unit are cases of taking control of whatever unit was fit for the job or already in their area, simply pushing the normal unit command into a supporting role. We had cases in real history were general had to command batellions and companies instead of devisions and armys because they A. Had nothing more left or B. Were cut of from the rest. A good example is Erwin Rommel in france who was so fast and so petty that he turned of his radio, ignored all orders and not only lost contact to the army he was a part of, but also the bigger chunk of his devision because in the words of one cracked up blue hedgehog: "he gotta go fast".....
My understanding of where the Jedi fit within the GAR was that they are both in and out of the chain of command. Anakin's style of command (front aggressive assault) simply doesn't make sense to command a greater size of soldiers which explain why he is technically under Cody but in fact not really. He command clones who are under Cody and has seniority over leadership and field command while Cody exert a more overall logistical and strategic command. Even if the 501st wasn't truly special forces, they acted as shock troop and Vanguards because that's how Anakin fight.
now i know why anakin was so angry when even a clonetrooper had a higher rank than him. The council really did him dirty.
This would be a perfect moment to make a Gmod RP server which wouldn't die in the first month of launch (hopefully)
One of the things I do like about Star Wars military forces is that they arnt actually all that competent.I know this comes from Lucas lack of knowledge on military matters but it actually fits and makes sense in universe
Not really Lucas's fault. The movies alone are vague enough you can assume whatever you need for it to make sense. The writers of the expanded lore are to blame for the incoherence.
Saw the turd whose comment you pinned and want you to know we appreciate your hard work and research that goes into these videos. Keep it up!
I have spent far too long trying to research this too. It makes literally zero sense. Sometimes Corps aren't actually corps (See: 41st) but are called a corps because they want to. There just isn't any standardisation and it is unfathomably irritating. I am so glad that I am not the only person who understands how annoying this all is.
hell, the 41st elite corps is sometimes just randomly referred to as the 41st elite legion
This video is one of the big reasons why I will always think of TCW as the kids show.
8:35, personally, i never assumed that when rex was referring too the 501st as a whole as a battalion, but talking about that specific sub-unit of the legion that was assigned too the umbara campaign.
I think the reason for missing clone marshal commanders is because Palawans were used in this role.
An example of this is that Ahsoka Tano seemed to be referred to as commander by the clones and when seen in context they seem to be using it as her rank not just as the person in command.
There are admittedly a lot of problems with the structure of the GAR but I think some of this is that the whole war was started early so units were slotted in haphazardly rather than as a more unified structure too make up for losses in the first battle.
So, a few things.
- The 41st, despite being referred to as a corps, is actually only a legion, and Commander Gree is a senior commander, not a marshal commander.
- Gree was never in charge of all of those units simultaneously, as each one of them had their own commanding officers (Captain Green Leader and Commander Gett for example), Gree was just shown to be the overarching commander for thise units during various battles. During the attack on the Tranquility only Gree, Green Leader, and Green Company were were present, so Gree was in charge because he was the highest ranking clone officer there. During the battle of Kashyyyk only Sarlacc Battalions A and B were present, but Gree was once again the highest clone officer present for the battle so he was in charge of those two units and their battalion commanders.
- Cody is not, and has never been in charge of the Third, that list is simply incorrect. The largest unit Cody is in charge of is the 7th Sky Corps.
- The 501st WAS a battalion at the beginning of the war, but was shortly reorganized into a legion.
- It is almost guaranteed that all of these units had their own correct commanders, but since most of the high ranking commanders were graduates of the ARC Training Program, they were often brought along on missions by their Jedi generals due to their battlefield prowess and tactical skills.
If I may ask, where is your evidence. And btw I refer to some clones as marshal commanders even they are not, because they command Corps.
@rynonymouss My evidence is years and years of studying the GAR, reading many MANY pieces of source material such as novels, comics, encyclopedias, etc., writing a list of quite literally every single clone trooper ever created by Lucasfilm (and I do mean EVERY clone trooper) and figuring out those clones' ranks and what units they belong to based on pre-existing information, and also just having a VERY good understanding of the GAR as a whole.
@rynonymouss Small change here. You were right about Gree being a marshal commander, as he does lead the 9th, but I stand the everything else I stated:
- The other units within the 41st all have their own commanding officers (i.e. Green Leader is the captain of Green Company.
- The 41st itself has specifically been referred to as a legion in numerous sources, and it being a legion is quite literally the only way that it would fit into the 9th.
- Cody has never once, in any source, been listed as part of the leadership of the Third, he has only ever been states to lead the 7th and the 212th, so the list you used is just wrong on that.
- The 501st was, at least in the current canon, originally a battalion that was later reorganized into a legion a few months into the war.
@@CloneCommanderCrater1102 That is fair, although I think TCW gets it wrong itself a few times (as I mentioned on Umbara where Rex says "every man in this battalion", i highly doubt he is referring to a specific battalion within the 501st. Instead I think its a script error)
@rynonymouss Oh, I'm not disagreeing with you there, that is a constant problem in Star Wars with characters saying the wrong unit type or the wrong rank. It always makes it annoying for those of us who are super knowledgeable of the lore. Also, in that instance with Rex calling it a battalion you are completely right because the 501st had been a legion for a long time at that point.
How armies work on paper: Like this.
How armies work in reality: Adapt when shit goes to hell. Anything other then what's on paper.
During the Battle of Umbara, Obi-Wan refers to the 501st’s clones as “Anakin’s Battalion”. My guess is that simply a battalion-sized group of clones from the 501st assisted the 212th in taking Umbara.
Don’t forget that Padawans were usually commanders, which is why Rex was a captain and not a commander. He was under Ahsoka.
you have more than one commander leading an entire legion. rex is just a captain leading hundred up to max 180 aka a company . can he be a special captain like leading an elite praetorian company ? yes but doesnt change the fact that from his rank he is way more off a frontline captain fighting in the thick of things not really having the skills to operate large scale units
@@laisphinto6372 IRL yes but do units in the GAR have multiple commanders? Gree, Cody, Bly, these are all clones without padawans stationed.
@@CullodenCowboyYes. Rancor Battalion had commanders Colt, Havoc, and Blitz, and Gree was in the same unit as Luminara Unduli's padawan, Barriss Offee.
@@CullodenCowboyYes, actually, every large unit has multiple commanders of varying degrees. The 501st Legion has Appo, Vill, Bow, and a number of unnamed commanders seen in various comics. The 327th Star Corps has Bly, A'den, Faie, Deviss, and a few unnamed commanders from comics. The 9th Assault Corps has Gree, Gett, Grey, and multiple unnamed commanders. The Coruscant Guard has Fox, Thorn, Thire, and Stone. There are also MANY other large units that have various named commanders in them.
Also, Jedi commanders and clone commanders have been shown to work together in clone units before such as Jedi Commander Caleb Dume and Clone Commander Grey as well as Jedi Commander Cal Kestis and the 13th Battalion clone commander.
I’ve always liked the fanon explanation of Cody’s high ranking - that Obi Wan just kept promoting him because of how competent he was lmao
I cannot thank you enough, I've always wanted to know how the GAR works on a tactical/logistical level; this could be useful for writing more militarily accurate stories about the clones
*GAR
Noted and corrected
@@Rhonix-Shellcollector you welcome
I like to think, that during the first Battle of Geonosis, where everthing seems to be thrown in, many of the Clones in leading roles were KIA (may it be on ground, or in space). With the need of fast movement and adaptation from the GAR, the politics in the Republic and shift there through the sudden appearance of one imginable large army (in the eyes of the senators at the time), in combination with putting Jedi in leading roles wich they had no clue about, they more or less "winged it" and tried to make some kind of military structure from the rest, thus creating that abomination of a "chain of command" and no real time to fix it.
The number of clones in the war will never not make me angry
Ryno you're popping off! Great video man!
Bro this video was epic, you deserve all the views
Classic Ryno, always a little too quiet. Incredibly interesting video tho, I don’t think I’ve seen a good explanation like this before
There's also conflicting info regarding some things I've heard. Such as, a Legion is apparently enough to conquer a world, despite only being ~9k clones ~16k with supports and all assets (heavy weapons, vehicles, air support, etc). And all of that fits on a single Acclamator. Or, if things are calculated right, about 5-8 Venators. A Jedi General, at minimum, should also be in command of a Squadron Fleet. That's 3-4 Sections, or 12-36 "warships", plus support ships (not sure if this is included in previous number). So this could be anywhere between 9 Venators/Acclamators, to 48 Consulars. Though I'm guessing a proper balanced Squadron should be 3-4 Venators, 1-2 Acclamators, 2-3 Pelta's, 4-8 Arquitens, and 6-12 Consular Chargers.
And yet in majority of conflicts, by the lowest ranking Jedi Generals (fresh Jedi Knights), we see them with, say, only 3-4 Venators, and a single legion spread between them. Sometimes only a regiment, or battalion. Even before Venators were deployed, they were flying maybe 3-4 Acclamators, with the same Legion quantity. So many inconsistencies and no balance. Especially when you consider that, supposedly, a High Jedi General (eg: Windu/Yoda) should have had an Armada at their disposal, leading an entire war theater.
And that's just for battles and numbers. What about the support ships? what about ship repair times and replacement times? are they going back to shipyards for maintenance, or repairing in the field? What about reinforcements for their legions, are they getting replacement troopers all the time, or are their legions only the size of a few battalions from constantly losses?
This is a bit of an out there comparison but at 4:35 when you discuss the 9th assault and 41st Elite. It puts me in the mind of the U.S. Army’s 2nd and 7th infantry division command structure. The units that are stateside are put under the command of the 7th infantry division while nominally being units of the second infantry division (they wear the patch and call themselves the 2ID). As soon as these units are sent overseas, it is back under the command of 2ID HQ out of Korea. It is a little confusing and almost certainly not intentional but it is a way to think about Unduli’s forces.
I mean the structure is similar to what our military is. For example I was in the Air Force, in the air force from top to bottom is Secaf, HAF, MAJCOMS, NAFs, Wings, Groups, and Squadrons. You can be a Colonel for a Squadron, or you can be a Colonel for an entire wing. And that's just the basics of it. In reality it kind of looks like a family tree, kind of what's depicted in the video. Some Majcoms will have bases spread out the entire country/world, where another majcom will only have one base.
My biggest problem with the GAR is that clones are also used to man starships and for logistics instead of using conscripts from the Republics local militias. The strenghts of clones are completely wasted here.
It also raises the question as to where the empires navy personnel came from, especially the high ranking officers since theyre obviously not clones
@@billross9132What a fucking silly question, lul. Enlisted, obviously.
@@papapalps2415 so the whole time the galaxy had ppl already trained with naval experience and skills but the republic never used them? I understand why they didn't use regular enlisted foot soldiers in the clone wars since training enough will be too slow for the cis droids, but why didnt they use already trained captains and other navy ranks in the clone wars who already had training, a question that couldve easily be answered if they just showed regular ship crews not clones piloting the venators
@@billross9132 ....Uh, what? Dude, one of the main side characters in TCW is Yularen, lul. In addition, there are plenty of non-clone officers, mainly naval but also army, that we see in the new and old canon's, up to and including familar names like Pellaeon, Zsinj, Needa, and so on. A LARGE portion of the Empire's officer base is directly grandfathered from the Republic.
@@papapalps2415 the clone wars series does do a pretty bad job of showing humans working in the military and navy in the republic in all fainess
I feel like Starwars is a series where people go: "Oh it's intentional that things are so convoluted, Palpatine made it that way to make his takeover easer" the most but in reality it's the writers not knowing god damn anything about actual military structure lmao.
To be fair, this makes the org charts for real life operations like TORCH and god forbid, Wellington’s pensinsular army look simple. British commanders of army, corps, division, and brigade like Wellington often technically commanded their own regiments, which themselves deployed battalions to entirely separate theaters and had parallel logistics, traditions, doctrine, and even equipment with every other regiment.
Obviously it's standars for commanders to keep certain sub units under their direct command. Likely to carry out more complicated tasks so the commander can ensure it's done properly
I’ve always just figured Cody and Obi-Wan have these high ranks but they also have their combat ranks. Like their attack battalion is the one they command but Cody’s overall role was Marshall commander. He was in the battlefield so he had to have his own legion and lower divisions too but he was the highest ranking clone outside of that too. Kind of like he’s the “team captain” of a sports team. He partakes in everything but he’s also in charge.
The Commander for 501st is Asoka which is why Rex never got promoted to Commander
I was literally just trying to figure this out after playing battlefront the other day.
I think Cody being in charge of the missing Sector army is implicit, clones are bred to fight so even when in a high position of power it makes sense they'd have personal corps, battalion, company, etc, just like Gree, when in the field they don't tag along with a random group, they take their own who they know personally, still being able to give orders for the whole group but any clone that isn't in the fight could be seen as a waste. Oversight and logistics makes a lot more sense to be covered by admirals when they're floating in orbit above the army. Warefare changes with that kind of direct observation and communication
Even in the U.S. Army, you have things like the Headquarters Company. Which is mainly an administrative unit that exists on paper to have somewhere to assign everyone with the unit it's within who aren't attached to any other subsidiary unit, to be fair, but they do result in nominally circular command structures and captains potentially in charge of higher ranks. This is dealt with both by the practical reality of not being able to order around your boss and by limiting the authority of the company commander to their specific duties.
And in real life you do also get things like a CO taking direct command of a forward component while leaving the rest of their unit with its XO. (I'm thinking of a particular river crossing during WWII where the CO of a battalion went with the troops who established a beachhead on the far side of the river, leaving most of the unit behind with the XO.) Possibly in the show we're mainly shown smaller units when higher-level officers who at good at field combat (i.e., Jedi) are with them and have taken direct command.
i think the craziest part of all this is that they only have roughly 3.2 million troops for the entire known galaxy
Is there a download of that image anywhere?
Hi, I'm also working on the GAR structure. I've made a few ORBAT graphics to visualize it better. Would love to chat with you some time, somewhere.
The 501st had a commander - Ahsoka. I guess thats why Rex never got the position until the end of the war.
(And because it's sounds cool and makes it easier to distinguish him from cody)
I have always assumed to an extent part of the reason we see so much fluctuation in command of the Grand Army of the Republic was because the Jedi would be deployed as needed and in certain cases would take over command of clones in the area. And that because of losses during the war you had higher ranking commanders a lot of time filling in the role of lower ranking squad or unit Commanders wow non clone officers were able to fill in those higher ranking roles. Which would explain why we have leadership that would be considered like a three-star General in modern times fighting on the front line. Also the Jedi might have been just too much of a valuable combat resource to allow to sit behind the lines and command. Great video. Consider me subscribed
Another big problem is the Role designation of each unit does not seem to reflect its actual type.
An Assault and Attack Unit should have different make ups for example.
Assault is more of a dedicated Frontal assault unit like an Mechanized infantry unit, pioneers with flame and other special weapons for flushing out destroying fortifications, plenty of IFVs and fire support vehicles.
Attack sounds like a more basic all purpose unit geared towards the assault role but not specifically. I’m guessing IFV heavy but without the specialized combat pioneers, and fire support vehicles.
Others like the “recon corps” sound like they would be loaned off larger forces as recon specialist, operating the faster vehicles and special equipment that THIER unit type implies but not a larger unit that would be kept together other then for equipment and training purposes.
Okay, it definitely doesn't _look_ functional. But at least it kinda was. The Galactic Empire's whole structure was so bad, that with the disappearance of Sidious, the entire government and military collapsed into basically a bunch of warlords. I'd rather deal with the GAR's functioning but absolutely messy structure than whatever was going on with the Imperial Military.
I remember in Legends the GAR kept 1 of 4 Corps in a sector army intact and the other 3 were split in sub-units.
It's clear you put a lot of effort into this video. Well done
In the future please pay closer attention to the sound mixing. I can hardly hear you
The misspelling of "lieutenant" and "sergeant" are a little funny lol
I realize that we pronounce them a little differently across the pond, but we spell them the same way.
TCW and Pre-TCW Clone Wars should not be mentioned together. TCW writers had no idea how the GAR was structured. Plus the show retconned everything.
An example: Legion was commanded by a Clone Senior Commander. So why was Rex the second in command of the 501st?
Appo was the Senior Commander while in the show he was a sergeant.
A Cpt only commands one company. A legion has 1 Senior Commander, 4 Regimental Commanders and 16 Battalion Cmndr so Rex was nowhere near.
Rex technically wasn't second-in-command of the 501st. Ahsoka was. She was the Senior Commander. Rex was only ever officially in command of Torrent Company, but him being Anakin's clone liasion officer, combined with Ahsoka being very much inexperienced when she first took her command, meant that Rex was de-facto second-in-command of the 501st.
@@occam7382 A legion had numerous commanders who outranked Rex. Padawans weren't Senior Commanders. Padawans were Regimental Commanders. A Clone Senior Commander outranked the Padawans.
Btw TCW 501st and Ahsoka were part of the retcon.
Basically, part of the reason its a mess is that Clone Wars is so poorly written and integrates so badly with canon that before Disney's editions you could damn well say its a non-canon spin off.
It sounds like a lot of these appointments were made on an ad hoc basis, rather than being the permenant established orbat. The Kaminoans probably had one idea of how the army should be structured and then the jedi changed things up according to their needs, and being powerful space wizards who can both conduct special operations and strategy they likely restructured command structures to suit the flexibility they needed.
The organisation, or lack thier of, of the GAR amd subsequent imperial navy always wound me up
I didnt realise i was watching a video from a small channel, well done
Nice video I can tell you put a lot of work in it, your channel got huge potential! I was suprised to see that you dont have a huge community yet. Dont listen to the haters keep going!
Where can I find this chart I’ve ran clone units for ARMA 3 in the past and am thinking of doing so once again in the future. If not I can use this for flavor as a Zeus when I make ORBATs for my missions
Commander Crees position makes sense if you consider the command structure of its units to be a part of themselves so to say. So He and Unduli would command the 9th assault corps alongside Cree. The main part of this unit is the 41st elite, stationed at the center of operations, so where the two would focus anyway, and containing the 41st Scout Batallion, directly surrounding the two officers as an elite squad during operations to assist them when they are going in. So they technically command all at the same time
Rex wasn’t referring to the whole 501st as a battalion he was referring to their specific battalion that contained those specific 501st clones in the immediate area my interpretation at least
I think you're overlooking a largely important factor in this: wars take place over time. This graphic should also include a timeline as many units may have been completely wiped out or suffered so many casualties that they would have to be completely restructured. Even with a seemingly infinite supply of clones, these units would have to adapt based on what they were doing and how much they had to work with at the time. So you're of course going to have a lot of redundancies. A good chunk of these groups were probably put together for a single operation and then disbanded.
Imagine getting a fully qualified military guy who knows structure stuff, and discussing the structure of the GAR with them
Former Air Force here. Rank ≠ structure. This actually isn't too different from what we use
I always assumed that because Skywalker wasn't a master he only led a company and that the rest of the 501st legion was doing something else, until Order 66 was issued and then Palpatine gave him command of the full legion.
There are some errors in this video. I am wondering if you have consulted sources like _The Essential Guide to Warfare_ or if you based your analysis on this other creator's diagram, which also seems to contain a few mistakes.
The main thing to understand is that the unique nature of the chain-of-command demanding that Jedi outrank clone troopers mean that even a Jedi Padawan with little battle experience is superior in authority to a clone marshal commander. This is known from countless sources going back to 2003. We see often in situations where a Padawan's master is missing, command then devolves to them.
If we had to equate the GAR ranks to NATO ranks, it is as follows:
• Jedi High General (OF-10) = marshal
• Jedi General (OF-9) = general
• Jedi Commander (OF-8), often a Jedi Padawan = lieutenant general
• Clone marshal commander (OF-7) = major general
• Clone senior commander (OF-6) = brigadier general
• Clone regimental commander (OF-5) = colonel
• Clone battalion commander (OF-4) = lieutenant colonel
• Clone major (OF-3) = major
• Clone captain (OF-2) = captain
• Clone lieutenant (OF-1) = lieutenant
One of the main errors in your video is the claim that Cody technically outranks Anakin. This is not true. You have to understand that the system is adapted to accommodate the prerequisite for Jedi to outrank clones despite clone officers' superior military experience.
As a result, even though Anakin Skywalker outranks Cody, he is given direct command over a smaller unit, the 501st Legion, as the subordinate to Obi-Wan Kenobi. Clone marshal commanders like Cody are in official command of corps, like you suggested, but they also have the duty to be the main military advisor to the Jedi General. This is just the realistic development of Jedi needing the expertise of the clone commanders.
Furthermore, Jedi and clone commanders certainly can take over a direct leadership role over a smaller unit within their army or corps. This appears to be the cause of some confusion in your video, as in why Obi-Wan commands both the Third Systems Army and the 7th Sky Corps and the 212th Attack Battalion. This isn't really so complicated. The superior officer may exercise direct command over a smaller unit being used for an operation at their discretion, that's all. We have seen often that they have even led small special ops missions.
The diagram is in error for labelling the 3rd Systems Army under the joint command of Obi-Wan and Cody. Cody serves as his chief military advisor due to the lack of Jedi's expertise in military strategy and the need for a liaison over the clones. But as a marshal commander, Cody's official duty is to command a corps.
Another mistake in your video is to disregard sector armies for system armies. The other way around would've made more sense. Systems armies are not well-discussed in the sources while _The Essential Guide to Warfare_ explains the significance of sector armies at length. The sector armies are equivalent to real-world military commands (like USCENTCOM, USINDOPACOM, etc.) They are important because their jurisdictions correspond to what would become military governorships under the Galactic Empire, ruled by Moffs and Grand Moffs.
Each sector army is divided into 4 corps, but in practice, only 1 corps of each sector army was used as a mobile offensive operations unit while the other 3 would be decentralized into smaller regiments, brigades, and companies and used to garrison local worlds.
The 9th Assault Corps should be under the command by Yoda, not Luminara Unduli. (I believe Wookieepedia is in error here). The confusion between the 9th Assault Corps and 41st Elite Corps seems to have been a genuine mistake on Lucasfilms' part, as the 41st Elite Corps has been described as a _legion_ within the 9th Assault Corps despite its name. In the Episode III Visual Dictionary, the clone trooper labelled as belonging to the 41st Elite Corps is not one based on Kashyyyk, but TCW exacerbated the confusion by referring to the troops under Gree the 41st as opposed to the 9th. The most logical way to fix this confusion in my opinion would be to have the 9th Assault Corps and 41st Elite Corps be parallel units in the same sector army. Perhaps in this case, two corps operated as mobile attack units instead of one.
Luminara is actually officially in charge of a portion of the 9th alongside Yoda. Multiple Jedi being placed in charge of separate portions of large units is nothing new. Take the 91st, for example, it's broken up under the command of at least three different Jedi, Stass Allie, Adi Gallia, and Mace Windu.
Also, the 41st is officially referred as a legion under the 9th in most sources, but somewhere along the way Lucasfilm also decided to list it as a corps, despite it not really working.
This was way too good of a job. Great job, mate. I can’t wait for the structure of the CIS. Also know as, Dooku, Grievous, generals who all get killed, and AI.
The Tex battalion comment I think was just in reference to the division of men at the base, espesvially with Obi Wan's assault on the capitol, Id assume most of the 501st was under his command, with Rex's battalion being given the mission to attack and capture the air base.
As an American it was interesting hearing you call them Leftenants. In all my American source books said “Lieutenant” under Captain, and it makes me wonder if that was localized in different books elsewhere? If so, which one is canon?
Because he seems to be british or canadian and they pronounce Lieutenant as "Leftenant", but they spell the same. Don't know why he chose to spell it wrong in the video.
I think that you raise some good points about clones not being the right rank to command certain brigades, corps or btn, etc., but that does have some real-life precedent. During WW2, many of the divisions that saw constant combat were severely under-strength, to the point that the highest ranked officer in a company might be a Lieutenant (or some equivelant, and this does apply to allied divisions). Sometimes a Sgt might be forced to take command of an entire platoon until a replacement officer reached the front lines. There are also cases of Sgts taking command of a platoon while they are in the process of being promoted to being an officer. Now, this probably is just a case of the writers of TCW not having much knowledge on supplemental material of TCW, but they did unintentionally do something that makes sense when you consider that the GAR was spread thin, and probably had trouble getting replacement officers for every unit. Therefore it would stand to reason that the GAR High Command would only supply replacement officers to units that didn't have a capable enough officer already commanding it in place of an officer of the right rank.
Another thing is that while Cody was the Commander of the 7th SC, he usually took direct command of the 212th AB during an operation. Again, this is mostly just an example of the writers not knowing enough lore. But still, Rex did the same thing with Torrent Company, and Gree did the same with Green Company. Basically every Commander or officer in charge of a regiment or larger formation led a smaller unit while on the battlefield. You could say this was either due to a shortage of officers, a preference to lead from the front, or just faulty writing. The system works, you just have to account for things that aren't as obvious, such as what I said above about units being under-strength.
Rex isn't a commander. Appo was the commander of the 501st, then Commander Vill after his death. Rex was a captain, he was captain of torrent company.
rex is a bit like a centurion of the first cohort or a praetorian cohort that leads a special century meanwhile appo is the primus pilus or the camp prefect who does actually way more big picture commanding not just in the thick of things
It could sort of make sense if you consider that the GAR was activated only partway into its creation, some subunits and formations being deployed before their larger organic units were ready, and random Jedi pulling units away to defend special interests or do certain missions.
Then when the wider formations were somewhat ready some of the relatively junior officers suddenly massively outweigh their supposed seniors in combat experience, and have better connections to their Jedi superiors, who for the most part hold Orbats in causal disdain.
The confusion was because jedi chose clones they liked and made them their assistant. Rex didn't have a permanent command so much as just accompanying Anakin
I'd like to see a video of you reforming this mess.
The best thing is regularly sending youre most high ranked troopers into aktive front line duty.
Actually a group of Clone Troopers is called a "Grey Baseplate"
Always found it funny when thinking about it, that most of the time afaik it’s shown as a Jedi general, his clone commander, and maybe a deputy, running these units. Esp at the corps level or sector army level, one would think that with the area covered by these units, actually managing and commanding the corps/sector army would be mentally impossible for 2-3 people with the amount of stuff/information they need to handle in a practical timeframe. Could be cool if they would dive more into the staff’s they’d probably have (could probably be battalion sized for the corps) imo
Totally agree
I still can't believe Lucas or the EU authors or whoever the fuck came up with the manpower of the GAR only being ~3 million.
It's FuNNy...
Star Trek isn't about war. It dives into the exploration of space the final frontier, culture and civilization, science and technological development, archeology, politics even, philosophy and self betterment... But it's creator Gene Roddenberry made sure to get many facts in check, especially scientific fact (which makes Star Trek's technology very believable and seems real), including how Starfleet's organization is structured like the Navy.
So basically Star Trek, a show about exploration, science, philosophy, and humanity, has better and more accurate militaristic qualities.
Cheers!
= D
Does anyone have a link to where I can find this chart, I want to look at it and try to make up units to turn the clone army into an actual functional organization
Great stuff we need more Star Wars Educators.
can you post a link for that chart??
imgur.com/a/cuxH3vD
If its confusing just remember this army was put together in secret for several years and slapped onto the republic in even shorter time
Wasn't Rex in charge of the Torrent Company, while the 501st as a whole was commanded by Appo?
Or am I thinking in book canon?
I think it was Ahsoka who was in charge of the 501st, with Rex in charge of Torrent company and Appo in charge of the other one.
On Umbara, which was an entire planet scale invasion both were present
Appo was promoted after Rex left the battalion after order 66. During the show he was just a Sergeant subordinate to rex
Officially speaking, Ahsoka was commander-in-chief of the 501st Brigade. Anakin commanded them as a Jedi General, while Rex officially only commanded Torrent Company. However, Rex was also Anakin's clone liasion officer, which (along with Ahsoka's laughable inexperience when she first got her command) meant that although he only technically commanded Torrent, Rex was basically in charge of the 501st for all intents and purposes.
I’ve actually been working on fixing the Clone Army. I kept system and sector armies and I increased the size of the Clone Army since 3.2 mil is WAY too low for galactic scale battle
I did not remember shit, but it was an awesome video