Why are there so many infantry battles in Star Wars?

Question

I've been watching the Clone Wars and it struck me how many battles come down to two large infantry forces facing off.

Often the tactics are WW1 era: two forces, largely ground-based, some mounted.

Often they arrive by air but disembark and make the assault on foot, despite the poor marksmanship of enemy anti-aircraft gunners and lack of guided missiles.

Like WW1 this often results in massive casualties. The lack of fresh cannon fodder is a long running theme.

Both sides seem to have the resources to build vast ships, but refrain from building WMD or even conventional bombers, let alone advanced weapons like orbital bombardment platforms.

Why is this?

Answer 1

Real world answer is that the Clone Wars are inspired on WW1 and WW2 movies. So good eye on catching that. In fact Filoni mentions that Lucas made them watch several of those films to get inspiration, and he also states that they wanted to recreate the "wow" feeling those movies provide.

If you want a SW answer then most probably you won't find a satisfactory one.

Answer 2

Both sides of the conflict claimed they were trying to liberate the planets from the oppressive republic or the evil separatists. When liberating a planet, bombing it with WMDs is not usually on your list of things to do. WMDs are used as a last resort to annihilate the enemy when you no longer care about casualties, or when the area they are in is no longer deemed valuable territory. While there should have been more dog fighting style fights depicted, if you want a city or town to be free of enemy forces you have to go door to door to do it.

Answer 3

I'll back up Jalex23's answer by saying that the ship-to-ship combat in those movies was also heavily inspired by naval combat from the age of sail; lots of big armored ships firing broadsides at each other. There's some WW2 fighter-planes dogfighting alongside for show too, but otherwise it's just broadsides.

This comes down to the fact that film is an almost purely visual medium; you have to show people things that they can understand. Realistic space combat would be completely invisible to the human eye. Ships would be firing from extreme range (literally millions of miles), and dodging randomly to avoid being hit by invisible laser beams, then exploding for no obvious reason. Both the ship and the ground combat has to work visually, and that means there's no artillery firing from over the horizon, or hypervelocity projectiles that arrive with no warning, etc. Just easily-understood formation fighting.

In fact, the way the troops arrive, then form up into formations, then fight would have been completely understandable to the ancient Greeks. A Greek war consisted of about a hundred men marching about a hundred miles to a neighboring city-state, then forming up into the ranks and files of a phalanx in a nice open field outside the city. The city's army of about the same size would form up at the other end of the field. At this point both sides would put on all their armor (you don't wear 70 pounds of bronze plate while you're marching), then the two phalanxes would walk towards each other. At the last moment they would charge at each other, so that they would have enough momentum for spears to potentially pierce armor. That single battle would decide the entire war, and casualties on both sides would be quite low compared to WW1.

Aside from the fact that they arrive in spaceships, and are using blasters rather than spears, I think that a lot of the combat in these movies is not so different. One author I read says that the decisive infantry battle is the "Western Way of War", a common heritage that has shaped our history and culture for over two and a half thousand years. I find it hard to disagree.

Answer 4

Infantry were cheaper

Both forces literally mass produced their infantry, either as clones or droids. When it comes down to it, a great many wars (all of them from a certain point of view) come down to logistics. Sips and large weapons are expensive and have to be more carefully managed, and can be used against you if captured by the enemy. Soldiers on the other hand will function independently based on their last orders. There is far more that goes into all of that of course, but depending on the economic dynamics (which are never totally clear) that could be a very simple reason.

Answer 5

I'm surprised nobody else has mentioned this but the large-scale weapons(WMD) route has it's drawbacks. In fact, Episode IV highlighted this

TARKIN: Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.

TAGGE: And what of the Rebellion? If the Rebels have obtained a complete technical readout of this station, it is possible, however unlikely, that they might find a weakness and exploit it.

There's two points to this end

You need to project your power and WMDs won't do that

What Tagge is saying (in a roundabout way) is that a small group of people were threatening the WMD. If the Rebels found and announced they have a way to take down the Death Star it would have blunted its impact.

If you kill everyone, whom will you rule?

So you blow up planets. nice. But... how many planets do you need to blow up to keep the "local systems in line"? One? Two? Ten? Instead, once you get to that level of fear, you put garrisons out there to keep the rules. Sooner or later, you need infantry. Blowing up every planet with rebels isn't feasible.

Answer 6

I'll add to both Jalex23 and db48x by stating that an infantry battle is much more personal to an audience member who has never seen combat of any kind than a ship-to-ship battle can ever be.

In an infantry battle, you can see guys running around, ducking for cover, taking fire, returning fire, and getting hit on various parts of the body. Even if they are in head-to-toe armor they still have the overall shape and movement of humanity. Each person in the audience can visualize themselves in that exact same situation.

Contrast this with a ship-to-ship battle. You see a ship blow up. You know that there are anywhere from one (in the case of a fighter craft) to thousands (in the case of a capital ship) of people on board, but unless there is a shot of the pilot going "I've been hit--AAAAAARRGGGGH!" before he crashes his ride, there's no personalization when the ship blows up.

And Lucas' point (among several) is that war is fugly. Nothing brings that home like infantry combat. The opening of Saving Private Ryan is an intense example of this.