Hello I Am Dying To Hear Your Thoughts Abt Star Wars Ships Like . "the Emphasis On Dogfighting In The

hello i am dying to hear your thoughts abt star wars ships like . "the emphasis on dogfighting in the clone wars led to years of messed up engineering" HOW can i not be Absolutely Fascinated, Enthralled Even, by that sentence . skittering up the walls and foaming at the mouth in Wanting-To-Know-More

My most sweet and beloved fair-lead, you are a stranger to me and yet now, you are also a bosom friend, and you will always be welcome at my hearth, because I just - I need you to know that when you originally sent me this ask, I sent a screenshot of it to the discord server I’m in and everybody’s reaction was basically “oh sweet Jesus” because they know, they KNOW how insane I can be about this topic, they know that sending an ask like this is like - you know when you shine a flashlight and all the roaches skitter out, that’s what sending me an ask like this does to my crazy. Now that post with that sentence also talked about you know, visual storytelling and whatnot, but I’m focusing on the dogfight question, because, this is the most delicious thing, you really can pick up so much about - the way the entire galaxy melted down during the Clone Wars, how the clone wars left a lasting impact on the technology of the galaxy, but really specifically, how the huge emphasis on dogfighting in the Clone Wars led to some massively fucked engineering decisions by manufacturers for at LEAST the next 50 years in universe. And oh, is the engineering fucked. I don’t even know where to begin, like - NO WAIT I KNOW, THE A WING, I WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE A WING.

Okay, before I begin, when I say A wing, I mean the classic RZ series, rather than the R22 Spearhead, which was basically a short lived prototype. Now, technically in the Ahsoka novel there’s mention of an RZ A-wing, which pulled their production history up by quite a bit, but honestly, I’m choosing to ignore that, because half of that novel has been retconned anyway and it doesn’t actually make sense that there would be classic RZ series A wings that soon after the clone wars given what else canon has to say about their development, so for purposes of this post, the Ahsoka novel doesn’t exist, and we can peg the true production start of the RZ series A wings sometime ten years or so into the Imperial Era, somewhere between 11-9BBY, giving them enough time to get to the mass-production level of popularity they seem to have achieved by the time of Rebels in about 5 BBY. (I promise this isn’t me being pedantic, there’s a reason why this timeline is important.)So like I said, by the time of Rebels in about 5ish BBY, the RZ-series A-wings have become a REGULAR feature in the Rebellion’s fleet, they have gained a massively popularity as a combat starfighter. A popularity, dearest fair-lead, which baffles me to my core, which bewilders me to my bones, which - it just bamboozles me to my utter fucking marrow, because the thing about the A-wing is that, on an objective level, the A-wing is utter shit. I mean it is WACK.The reason the Rebellion uses it is because it’s fast. It’s faster than fast. The RZ-1 model A-wing is the only starfighter (including the T-65 X Wing) in the Rebellion’s arsenal which can outrun and outmaneuver a TIE fighter in space. This monstrosity can hit 1300kph (to give you a reference, the average race car? Those run at about 360). But the thing is, at speeds of this level, the name of the game when you’re crafting your engineering design is trade-offs - and the sacrifices made so it could get that speed makes it one of the most dangerous things a pilot could touch. Firstly, it’s obscenely difficult to fly. RZ-1s use two J-77 “Event Horizon” engines, which are some of the most powerful in the business, but also the most volatile. Even with thrust control, the power produced means that maneuvering these highly sensitive, highly-powerful engines is 1/3 skill, 1/3 quick thinking, and 1/3 desperately praying that the Force decides to be with you that certain day. At those speeds, your moves have to be absolutely fucking precise - a single wrong touch, a single less than perfect turn, and your family is collecting your life insurance policy. Secondly, it’s obscenely cramped. Wookiepedia refers to it as “a cockpit with two engines” but I think even that is generous - it’s more like a computer chair hogtied to two rockets. Because, to get that speed, it has to be small, and it has to be slim. That means limited life support, limited tech, limited components. And do you know what else you sacrifice to get that size? Astromech assistance - these things barely had room for a hyperdrive, much less a droid. So all those highly precise, highly technical moves you have to make to ensure that your spine isn’t separated from your body? You have to do it all by fucking hand. But what really makes the A-wings so dangerous is that they are obscenely poorly manufactured. The RZ-1s swapped out the more standard, safer hull armor and component materials for their lightweight alternatives, so they could increase their speed. But the thing is, as I said earlier, those event horizon engines are massively powerful and massively volatile, and the vectors of g-force that flying them creates puts ridiculous amounts of compressive/tensile stress on the fighter - which, because it is crafted with lightweight materials, it simply can’t handle. Which means - breakdowns, breakdowns, breakdowns. These fucking things might as well include a mechanic with every purchase, they break down so much. For every ten minutes of flight, you’re stuck with two days of repairs at best. The materials break, wires snap, components wear down. And you know, component malfunctions and minor power losses, those are bad enough - you can’t fight in combat if your weapons jam thirty seconds after take off. But thruster decalibrations, vector control errors, loss of stability - those can be death sentences in any fighter, but particularly when you’re flying at 1300 kph - like I said, they’re finicky bitches, those A-wings, and one wrong move is your life.

“Mikhayla,” you say to me in horror, “why would any sane person use these things in the first place? Why is speed so important, that it’s worth this?”And this is where the prevalence of dogfighting during the Clone Wars comes in.

Here’s where the production history is useful. The A-wing is manufactured by a subsidiary company of Kuat Drive Yards (KDY) called Kuat Systems Engineering. At this point in the presentation, I’ll take a pause so the audience can jeer and hiss at the amalgamation of sublime jackassery which is Kuat Systems Engineering. Trust me, go on, they deserve it. Done? Good. Before the Clone Wars, Kuat Systems Engineering - its bread and butter is the Delta 7 Aethersprite. And the important thing to know about the Delta 7s is, they were designed specifically with the Jedi in mind - a ton of internal systems were stripped out, and the controls were jacked up to be as sensitive/responsive as possible, because you know, those are the things you don’t/do need when the people piloting these fighters are Force sensitive. They’re developed for a specific purpose, decades before the clone wars even happen. The Delta 7s aren’t responsible for what come after them. “We did nothing wrong” cry out the Delta 7s to the world. “I know this, and I love you” I reassure them. And listen, the Delta line has its own issues - their speed capability is in the 1200s, so similar trade offs exist, but to be honest, I pretend I do not see it, because - UGH, because they’re pretty, okay, they’re so pretty, is the thing, such a lovely design. Give me a break - I’m on paragraph eight of a star wars meta post at one in the morning. A girl has to take pleasure in the little things. Where was I? Oh, the Delta 7s. So, like I said, the Delta 7s are built nearly exclusively for the Jedi, who can handle a lot more sensitivity and speed than pretty much any other pilot, because you know, they have space magic in their heads. And that’s going to come in dead useful once the wars start, because you have to remember - the Separatist army? They’re droids. You don’t have to worry about the biological effects of g-force maneuvers on droids. Who CARES about defensive measures. Life support systems? Unnecessary. Safety measures - only necessary in as much as you want to save money. So the fighters the Separatists are using are fast, and absolutely lethal. Once they get to you, there’s nothing you can do. So the name of air combat during the Clone Wars becomes, stop them before they can fucking get to you. Which means the name of the game in air combat becomes dogfighting. And thus begins the arms race of the century. Because, the faster the Separatist tech becomes, the faster the Jedi need to be to circumvent it. They’re ridiculously outnumbered, too, so they can’t depend entirely on firepower - they need to be fast, the best of the best. So you get an upgraded Delta 7, which is the Delta 7b, and there’s not too many changes. Then, partway through the war, the Separatist fighters become entirely automatic droids in of themselves. They can make calculations in seconds, they require nothing other than a computer and guns. So the Jedi go back to KSE. And KSE comes back with the ETA-2 light interceptor. This thing. This thing is what the A-wing wants to be when it grows up, when it comes to speed. Clocking in at speed capabilities of 1500 kph, this was even more dangerous than the A wing. No shields. Impossibly light armament. There’s a reason you only see the best Jedi fly these things - most notably, Anakin Skywalker. They’re so wild that by all rights they shouldn’t even exist. And this is what becomes THE ideal in a starfighter, because you want dogfights, this thing will give you dogfights like you have never seen before. This thing will make dogfights seem like leisurely strolls.

Overnight, the ETA-2 becomes the wet dream of every engineer and pilot this side of Wild Space. And every single fighter line produced after the ETA-2 for the next fifty years takes some measure of design inspiration from this model. The TIE fighter? Developed by Kuat engineers who switched to Sienar Fleet Systems once that manufacturer won the main Imperial contract. The A-wing? Modeled after the R-22 prototype which itself was modeled after the ETA-2. Even fighter lines which don’t take direct inspiration from the ETA-2 still take lessons learned from the “how 2 speed” playbook. Except remember - the ETA-2 was developed exclusively for Jedi, who had literal wizard magic in their brains. The average person can’t handle the absolutely non-existent safety measures, the breakdowns, the power of these types of fighters. But the Jedi are gone - the average people are the only ones who survive. So you get massively increased casualties, huge supply costs, but dogfights are still the name of the game, and dogfights mean desperation, so nobody cares, and everything becomes about being faster, faster, faster. The TIE turns into the TIE interceptor. The RZ-1 turns into the RZ-2, which gets rid of shields and what little life support remained. War becomes not an analysis in the amount of life lost, but how fast you can make your enemy lose it. And that vast dehumanization does really dirty fucking things to pilots, and it does really dirty fucking things to engineering, and by the time of the sequels, you have pilots who think suicide fighting is the norm, you have Poe Dameron playing chicken with Star Destroyers, because what does it matter, that it puts squadrons at risk, if it wins them the day, what does it matter if they die, that’s what it means to fly anyways.

It’s a really brutal example of how war progresses tech, but it’s also a brutal example of how that progression isn’t always a good thing, how that progression isn’t a progression, but an arms race. But hey, man. The more fighters destroyed, the more needed. The average A-wing sells for 175,000 credits a pop, and the Rebellion is willing to pay. And Kuat Drive Yards?

They make a killing.