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While the GAR is predominantly made up of clones and the Separatists' of droids, both also have their share of non-clone, non-droid soldiers (e.g. Wookiees, Umbarans, Gungans, Mon Calamari, Quarren, etc.).

With organic lifeforms fighting alongside the Separatists' droids, has the Republic ever deployed droid forces to fight alongside the clones? I don't mean special cases like D-Squad or those re-programmed battle droids used in the mission to the Citadel. Rather, I'm looking for cases where droid forces are fielded en masse by the Republic against the Separatists, though not necessarily as the predominant force present on the Republic side. Has it ever happened before?

Answers from both canon and Legends welcome.

Null
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thegreatjedi
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1 Answers1

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No, and with good reason

Disregarding the special cases such as those you gave above, I've found no instances of a standing droid fighting force in use by the Republic.

They had no reason to either. Battle droid creation was monopolized by the Separatists, and the Republic already had a fighting force that proved superior in all but numbers. On top of this, most non-clone species we see fighting are in defense of their own homeworlds. It is much more comforting to be fighting alongside fellow living creatures than with robots against robots (and the clones can't be reprogrammed against you either, like in the citadel mission). Also, it would have been much easier to garner support for the clones in the senate war effort than a bunch of soulless droids. As such, the Republic ultimately chose to have faith in the clone army, and so they continued to invest in it.

Community
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Mwr247
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  • "it would have been much easier to garner support for the clones in the senate war effort than a bunch of soulless droids" I'm not sure that's true. Personally, I'd be far more willing to send a bunch of "soulless droids" off to war than breed a bunch of human beings for war and force them to fight and die. – Null May 26 '17 at 15:45
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    @Null Personal is different from political, and image is everything. When your enemy is essentially a bunch of heartless droids who's only purpose is to invade worlds and kill, it's a frightening prospect. Fighting these terminators with living creatures who you can at least sell to the public as kind, caring, and relatable (which the Clone Wars series later expands upon), helps boosts support for the war effort to stand against those evil monsters. Would you really feel safer if your government decided to produce terminators to fight their battles? – Mwr247 May 26 '17 at 15:56
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    The Republic Senate did not support any military force until the Separatist droid threat was discovered. The Republic used the clones because they were the only military force available. If the Republic had only droids available to oppose the Separatists then they would have used droids. Support for the war effort was not a problem once the Separatist droids were discovered. If the Republic and Jedi had had a choice between droids and clones I would hope that they'd prefer to use droids rather than human war slaves. – Null May 26 '17 at 16:08
  • @Null Not disagreeing on why they used clones at all (especially at the start), but rather why they continued using them over switching to droids. Starting up a droid project would have been a massive additional expenditure, and so it made more sense to just garner support for the clones and overlook the moral issues (and support/PR was needed, because many worlds were actively dropping off to join the Separatists). – Mwr247 May 26 '17 at 16:37
  • Arguably as well, the clones were bred to want to fight and serve, so they would still choose to if given the choice (exceptions existed of course). Not saying it was right, but I can see it being a loophole in the minds of the senate. Why deprive them of what they wanted out of life, especially when it served their goals as well (again, their rationale)? – Mwr247 May 26 '17 at 16:39
  • @Null Well, let's not forget that the Jedi's judgement has been clouded by the dark side at this point. They are so pressed to defend the Republic that they have lost focus on the bigger picture, such as the moral issues you have raised. – thegreatjedi May 26 '17 at 16:43
  • @Mwr247 I agree that starting up a droid project would probably not have been cost effective. Given that, there was really no choice to make (clones vs. droids) so there wasn't really any need to garner support for more clones. It was the clones or nothing, so it was a relatively easy choice for someone who supported the Republic to support the clones. Of course, the real question (which few in the Republic asked) is whether the Republic was worth fighting for if it needed a slave army to fight against a group that was fighting for its independence (i.e. that just wanted to go its own way). – Null May 26 '17 at 16:58
  • I don't buy the rationale that the clones were bred to want to fight and therefore it was okay to enslave them. If that were the case then the Republic could allow any of the exceptions who didn't want to fight to quit -- there'd be no risk that the other clones would quite en masse since they "wanted" to fight, right? But the Republic didn't do that -- it forced them to fight, whether they wanted to or not. – Null May 26 '17 at 17:00
  • @thegreatjedi The Jedi had long been blinded by their own self-righteous pride. Blaming their moral failures on the dark side is just their own pathetic excuse. – Null May 26 '17 at 17:02
  • @Null - The problem is that all evidence suggests that most sentient droids (including the Trade Federation B1s) are also basically enslaved. I've seen enough evidence to believe that Lucas at least didn't particularly see this as odd, since he has at times said things that indicate that he sees less human-looking creatures as less valuable (he once said that the Geonosoans were just bugs, so killing them wasn't really a big deal). – Adamant May 26 '17 at 20:04
  • All of which is to say that the clones are allegory: enslaving them (or other human-like species such as Wookiees or Twi'lek) was always meant to be horrible and the province of the evil Empire or the corrupt Republic. But buying and selling and memory-wiping sentient machines, or killing ugly bugs, is not such an issue. Later authors have done much to redeem at least the protagonists with their attitudes in this regard, and there was always some evidence that Luke never viewed droids as merely property. It's Lucas I am not sure about. – Adamant May 26 '17 at 20:06
  • @Adamant I'm not sure the clones were meant to be an allegory about slavery because the Jedi theoretically oppose slavery yet happily forced the clones to fight. If it was intended then it was so subtle that most people seem to have missed it (since most people think the Jedi are good). I suspect it was more of an unintentional allegory. – Null May 26 '17 at 20:50
  • @Null Well if we follow canon, the dark side energies emanating from the Sith shrine hidden beneath the Jedi Temple on Coruscant was considered by the Sith to be one of their biggest secrets and most important weapons, gradually corrupting the Jedi Order from within. From that perspective, we can say that the Jedi had unknowingly suffered from a thousand years of psychological and moral "attrition", from a certain point of view. – thegreatjedi May 27 '17 at 04:27
  • @Null - Well, perhaps I give Lucas too much credit. I thought he might have been viewing the use of clones as another aspect of the Jedi’s corruption (which is a theme he definitely did put in there). But perhaps the corruption was more giving into war than allowing the forced labor of clones. – Adamant May 27 '17 at 06:10
  • I was always more worried about the droids, though. Clones may have been created for war, and put through some pretty horrible situations, and they were legally required to serve, but at least this last part always seemed to be meant to be viewed negatively. Except for recent Disney stuff, the Star Wars materials always seemed to treat them almost reflexively as property, with protagonists treating some droids as equals, but not seeming to question the general premise. I’m all for flawed societies, but what worried me was that that might have been the position of Lucas (and some others). – Adamant May 27 '17 at 06:12
  • What about the battle droids that R2-D2 commanded in the episode, "The Citadel"? – Roberto Feb 26 '24 at 14:21