Why was there no protection for the transports on The Mandalorian?

Question

Attention! Spoilers ahead from The Mandalorian S2E7.

This has been bugging me for a few days and I figured I might as well ask, but in S2E7 of The Mandalorian,

There are transports of explosives being transported from one place to another. Each transport seems to only have 2 stormtroopers as guards and nothing else. Many transports seem to have been destroyed by pirates, and yet they are still sent with just 2 stormtrooper guards. Even though the Mandalorian was on one, he was still very nearly killed protecting the transport from the pirates. This seems exceedingly stupid on the Empire's part, as this wastes transports, their cargo, time, and stormtroopers.

Why aren't they given an escort of any kind, or at least fitted with a turret of some kind?

Answer 1

The base apparently had only two TIE fighters and a limited supply of troops.

My suspicion is they felt their odds were better sending several transports at once in the hopes one or two make it.

If they had the facilities to create Juggernauts there and they could just conscript drivers from the locals, that model would work pretty well for quite some time.

We don't know how often rebel attacks took place, or whether the one we saw was typical or more ferocious and better equipped than most.

The implication of the conversation they had with Hess is that the Empire was close to having enough Rydonium to do something terrible, so it's possible Mando got there in the midst of some kind of counter-op.

Answer 2

There's a few reasons the episode itself mentioned

1. This is a secret Imperial base. They appeared to be heavily relying on security through obscurity. If it weren't a secret base, you'd have X-wings doing the work with air superiority and minimal risk.
2. There's not a lot of resources devoted to this base (likely due in no small part to it being secret). The garrison seems to have about 100-200 troops. They have two tie fighters, a couple of defensive batteries and... that's about it.
3. The pirates caught them by surprise. The other transports were radioing for help as they were being blown up. Note that the Tie fighters don't show up until it was nearly too late for Din. If they had any idea that would happen, they would have had them flying already.

Answer 3

Out of universe:

This episode is based on the 1953 French film "Le salaire de la peur" (The Wages of Fear, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Fear), which was remade in the U.S. in 1977 as "Sorcerer" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorcerer_(film)). The Mandalorian episode seems particularly based on the American film, which features a confrontation with bandits. I don't recall an equivalent incident in the French original.

The drivers in these films are on their own, so the drivers in The Mandalorian are similarly alone.

Fun fact, presumably known to the people who wrote this episode — Sorcerer was a box office bomb, a fact that is typically explained by the fact that it opened against Star Wars. By embedding Sorcerer into Mandalorian, they give exposure within the Star Wars universe to a film that the original Star Wars prevented people from seeing all those years ago.