Analysis of the Battle of Hoth

In February, defense blogger Spencer Ackerman wrote a post dissecting the Battle of Hoth from Empire Strikes Back. Ackerman details all of Darth Vader's military mistakes, from the initial entry into the Hoth system to his allowance of letting Luke Skywalker escape. According to Ackerman, the entire battle was a debacle and "a classic fiasco of overconfidence and theology masquerading as military judgment — and the exact opposite of the Empire striking back."

The comments are priceless as well.

JordanViray • 3 months ago  

Have you even served with the Imperial forces? Sure it's easy to take potshots from your military blog in some no-name star system while the fleet and its legions fight the rebel insurgents, but combined space/air/ground operations are a lot messier than any infographic could ever portray.

Even with the Empire's full spectrum dominance of the battlespace, you can't just leverage fleet assets which are optimized for ship-to-ship combat into a large scale ground invasion force. A Star Destroyer might have more firepower than the entire militaries of less advanced worlds but you still need a proper ground assault ship to support infantry landings.

Unfortunately, the do-nothing blowhards in Coruscant couldn't get funding for the promising alternative designs from Sienar Fleet Systems and we ended up (as usual) with Kuat Drive Yards' overpriced, overdue, and underperforming AT-AT mess.

The bottom line is that Vader is still as impulsive as he was before he donned the get-up of a Dark Lord of the Sith. He doesn't trust those with years of military service and leads based on emotion, not strategy.

Shortly after, Ackerman hosted a forum to responses from other military bloggers. Many of these bloggers disagreed with Ackerman and pointed to the Empire's other military losses as bigger or more pivotal. Only one pointed out Vader and the Emperor had different goals by invading Hoth: the Emperor wanted to squash the Rebellion and Vader wanted to capture Luke. This is an interesting perspective. And I am not sure I agree.

Perhaps the Emperor didn't mind the failure and wanted Vader to drive the Rebels about. Maybe the entire outcome of A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back were the design of the Emperor as the entire Sith-Jedi conflict. As he says "Everything is going as I have seen it.". Maybe the Sith Lord wanted to Luke to find Yoda for him as the Emperor hadn't weeded out the little green Jedi since the end of the Clone Wars.

By orchestrating the invasion of Hoth, perhaps the Emperor really wanted to bring out Yoda from Dagobah and lure him to Coruscant where he could finish business with the Jedi Master and steal his apprentice. Then he could kill off Vader, and Luke and the Emperor could rule the galaxy as "rule of two" Sith Lords.

Of course, I've done all of this rabbit-hole analysis before and ended at the same point.

(Picture from the Graphic Firing Table blog.)