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While the commission, funding, and creation of the clone army is covered extensively in the Clone Wars series, its never really explained how the clone's Star Craft and other equipment is designed, built, and concealed. While in the movies it appears that the clones are grown with ready-made equipment in-hand, it seems like the design and creation of the star craft and equipment they use is never really hinted at.
Acclamator-class transgalactic military assault ship

I mean while its one thing to grow millions of clones using the Kaminoans and hiding their star system, the construction, funding, and concealment of their Troop transports, Fighters, walkers, and other Starships seems to be the greater feat. How could the Republic not notice the massive amount of economic activity necessary to design, test, and build those Starships? Wouldn't that require extensive shipyards and corporate R&D/funding?

Did the Kaminoans commission and order the ships as well as the clones? Seems like the Kaminoans wouldn't bother to give away their army if they owned an entire space navy as well as the soldiers. Did the Republic already have army and navy equipment sitting around waiting for an army? That option also seems bizarre.

Is the design and creation of the clones original equipment ever addressed in canon or otherwise?

(I guess the Venator-class Star Destroyers didn't make an appearance until Revenge of the Sith, but it still seems like they had most of their equipment ready to go, right away. Like their troop transport craft and Acclamator-class transgalactic military assault ships).

DCOPTimDowd
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Mark Rogers
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    Semi-dupe of Who built the Republic Star Destroyers?. This answers the question of who built them, but it doesn't answer the question of how they kept it secret. – Valorum Nov 27 '17 at 08:45
  • The CIS also put together a sizeable fleet without the Republic minding. And the rebels put together a few dozen capital ships right under the Empire's nose. Apparently you can do that sort of thing in the Star Wars galaxy without much fuss. – DaaaahWhoosh Nov 27 '17 at 18:43
  • The answers here might also cover the funding of the hardware: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/65706/how-did-the-republic-pay-for-the-clone-army – Essen Dec 02 '17 at 14:33
  • @Valorum - The linked question does answer some of the text of the question. But the linked question does not really ask the "How they kept all this production secret"? no? – Mark Rogers Dec 18 '22 at 16:29
  • @MarkRogers - This is addressed in my answer to the linked duplicate. The fleet was developed with the funds set aside for the development of the clone army "The clone army and its hardware came as a package deal, but the Kaminoans didn't build the big guns. An army is pretty useless if you can't move it anywhere, so the Kaminoans sub-contracted to the inhabitants of the nearby Rothana system to develop the transports and armor seen in the first battle of the Clone Wars." hence there was no external activity to hide, just a shipyard building ships. – Valorum Dec 18 '22 at 16:32
  • @Valorum- That question doesn't directly ask how they were made hidden. If someone was googling, it seems like they would miss the hit on that question. – Mark Rogers Dec 23 '22 at 17:15

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Maybe the answer is simple? actually until the Clone Wars we do not see much military crafts of the Old Republic.

All of this crafts could be just regular army equipment, The case would be to order a big amount of crafts and other stuff and "mothball" them in shipyards.

This is one of the major plot holes, because the Clone program would have cost millions of credits, leaking out from the budget, and I do not believe that the Jedi would not notice that disappearing from their account. The Senate (dumb as it was) would also see a budget leak.

The only explanation would be private money, private businesses and a lot of shady money transfers to make this thing untraceable. Like Mafia money laundering. And that's not very Jedi thing to do.

T.J.L.
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Kowalien
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