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MrNexx
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Error
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 Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2017 12:16 pm Post subject: |
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Interesting breakdown. However, qualifying any action movie from a tactical point of view is generally going to yield the same results, unless it's very specifically informed by real-life military tactics.
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Scots Dragon
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| Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2017 2:02 pm Post subject: |
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| There is also the other factor to consider; the Rebel Alliance is at its core a guerella force, not a fully-equipped military. The methods which work for a guerella force's goals are not necessarily the same as they are for a full military, especially given that the Rebel Alliance basically doesn't have all that many resources to call upon. |
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Sutehp
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| Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2017 3:08 pm Post subject: |
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Angry Staff Officer did a similarly-themed article for Wired Magazine back in December when Rogue One first came out. You can find it here: https://www.wired.com/2016/12/rogue-one-teaches-us-rebel-alliances-military-chops
| Scots Dragon wrote: | | There is also the other factor to consider; the Rebel Alliance is at its core a guerella force, not a fully-equipped military. The methods which work for a guerella force's goals are not necessarily the same as they are for a full military, especially given that the Rebel Alliance basically doesn't have all that many resources to call upon. |
Which makes the Rebel Alliance's tactics all the more confusing to Angry Staff Officer (ASO), because the resources that the Rebel Alliance did deploy to Scarif went in with only "half a plan" and were essentially wasted when more resources could have been saved and recovered from Scarif with better planning and tactics.
If you're a guerilla force with limited resources, it becomes that much more imperative to not waste or throw away what you do have. Which is exactly the point that ASO is trying to make. No military force, whether its a well-equipped standing army like the Empire and the US military or whether it's a guerilla rag-tag bunch of misfits, can afford to use tactics like We Have Reserves for very long (or at all in the latter case).
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Whill
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| Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2017 7:01 pm Post subject: Re: No More Task Force Rogue Ones |
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| MrNexx wrote: | | https://angrystaffofficer.com/2017/02/27/no-more-task-force-rogue-ones-a-tactical-analysis-of-the-raid-on-scarif/ |
Thanks for sharing this. Three things:
(1) Regardless of tactical preparedness, risk or efficiency, the mission was a pure and utter success by the single most important criterium. Without obtaining the Death Star plans, the weakness couldn't have been found, the Death Star wouldn't have been destroyed, the Rebellion would be doomed, and the Empire would realize their dream of ruling through fear of your planet being destroyed at any moment, which is exactly what the Ersos were trying to prevent.
(2) There was no time for better planning and tactics. The core Rogue One team had already seen first hand what the Death Star is capable of on Jedha. The sooner they could acquire the Death Star plans, the better chance they had to prevent more disasters. (As it stands they still didn't prevent Alderaan's destruction.) It makes perfect sense to me to rush into action, knowing there is an operational Death Star out there able to destroy planets at any time. And they even went rogue from the Alliance, so their opportunity to steal the Imperial shuttle and leave Yavin without authorization was not open-ended. It was urgent. Grab anything not tied down and let's go!
(3) It's cinematic fiction. The movie was exciting and dramatic, and that was only helped by the Rogue One team being a ragtag guerrilla rebel group going off half-cocked with the clock running. This made it feel more 'Star Wars' too me, so the movie had a verisimilitude that accurate real life military tactics probably wouldn't have given it.
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Last edited by Whill on Mon Mar 06, 2017 2:57 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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MrNexx
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| Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2017 10:43 am Post subject: Re: No More Task Force Rogue Ones |
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| Whill wrote: |
(3) It's cinematic fiction. The movie was exciting and dramatic, and that was only helped by the Rogue One team being a ragtag guerrilla rebel group going off half-cocked with the clock running. This made it feel more 'Star Wars' too me, so the movie had a verisimilitude that accurate real life military tactics probably wouldn't have given it. |
This one, in particular, I want to address. Yes, it's cinematic fiction. But I don't think that excuses it from being treated seriously. While the article is a critique of the actions taken, I don't think it's a critique of the motivations, especially not of the main characters.
But, yeah, he does overlook that it was not a sanctioned raid.
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Sutehp
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| Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2017 12:31 pm Post subject: Re: No More Task Force Rogue Ones |
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| MrNexx wrote: | | But, yeah, he does overlook that it was not a sanctioned raid. |
+1. Then again, one might argue that the Battle of Scarif became a sanctioned raid once Admiral Raddus and the rest of the Rebel Fleet showed up. OTOH, the movie goes out of its way to say that Raddus himself went rogue once he found out that Rogue One was already on their way to Scarif.
So yeah, the Alliance Council didn't sanction the raid on Scarif at all, even though at least two council members (Raddus and General Merrick AKA Blue Leader) outright defied the Council to go fight at Scarif, not to mention at least two other council members, namely Mon Mothma and Bail Organa, who wanted to sanction the raid but were outvoted (and then went and did their own things anyway).
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Whill
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| Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2017 3:16 pm Post subject: Re: No More Task Force Rogue Ones |
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| MrNexx wrote: | | Whill wrote: |
(3) It's cinematic fiction. The movie was exciting and dramatic, and that was only helped by the Rogue One team being a ragtag guerrilla rebel group going off half-cocked with the clock running. This made it feel more 'Star Wars' too me, so the movie had a verisimilitude that accurate real life military tactics probably wouldn't have given it. |
This one, in particular, I want to address. Yes, it's cinematic fiction. But I don't think that excuses it from being treated seriously. |
I think you know I take Star Wars very seriously. And my points work best in support of each other. So, yes, while it made it a more entertaining movie the way it is (maybe not for this author, but for me and a whole helluva lot of people), the Rogue One team were in a rush so that helps explain a lack of better planning. And no, it wasn't a sanctioned raid. And no, Admiral Raddus didn't make it sanctioned - He and his other ship captains defied the Alliance council as much as Rogue One did.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2017 3:33 pm Post subject: |
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The impression I got from Rogue One was that, at that time in the Alliance's history, it was very much a confederation of mostly independent groups who were loosely grouped together under a relatively weak central authority. WEG put the Alliance under the central authority of Mon Mothma and a ruling council, but it was obvious in Rogue One that authority was not all that centralized. The WEG Alliance command structure may have resulted from the political capital garnered by the ultimate success of the Battle of Scariff (culminating in the destruction of the Death Star).
As such, I'd argue that Admiral Raddus, at that time, had at least some authority to act unilaterally, as in "you sissies do what you want; I and mine are going to war," and there was little the others could say or do about it, since their agency to decide not to attack was based on their own relative autonomy from Alliance central command.
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Dustflier
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| Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2017 4:05 pm Post subject: |
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I think you're barking up the right tree there, CRMcNeill.
Had the Alliance Council voted to "go to war" with the Empire, I believe that Mon Mothma, as the "Head of State" and Chancellor of the Council, could have confirmed the vote and made the order binding. But they didn't order war or inaction, instead they only decided that the Alliance as a whole would not support the raid.
Of course once Mon Mothma and the rest of the Council realized that such a major contingent of their combined forces had gone to Scariff, she authorized reinforcements as a stop-gap measure to avoid the already-committed forces into being lost without achieving their objective.
And then once the Rebellion has "activated" into a wartime stance, I suspect she had greater authority to shrug off the "group consensus."
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