All TIED up
TIE Fighters are an interesting piece of the Imperial war machine. They are instantly recognizable as Imperial yet dismissed right away as complete garbage by the average viewer. Its fascinating that this occurs when an equally Imperial symbol the Storm Trooper who could be considered as random villainous mooks are generally viewed more of as a threat to our heroes.
Now within the universe we can argue that the TIE series of star fighters may have some misses but the concept as a whole actually would make a hell of a lot of sense if your trying to supply a space based navy with millions to billions of star fighters. Now I will wholly admit that the TIE fighter doctrine is not effective and must be reworked to make these craft more combat effective but as a whole the concept is actually sound and I'll break down the concept as best I can
The TIE series of strike craft were initially envisioned to be cheap, light strike craft which would be easy to supply to the far flung outposts of the Imperial Navy. After fighting swarms of droid fighters during the Clone Wars the Imperial Navy opted for light fighters that had high agility above all else. This comes from always building your military to fight the last war you fought. TIE fighters would have similar agility to droid fighters but with the superiority of having a manned fighter vs a simple droid brain. They may have been cheap which would have made them easy to buy in bulk but I think the real reason for buying them isnt because of the cost as the Galactic Empire who can build two death stars in a barely over 2 decades alongside the massive number of warships seems to have the industrial base to handle this.
The true brilliance of the TIE series craft is in the picture above. TIEs are highly modular and therefore are easy to maintain as you can replace parts quickly and easily. This also gives a capitol ship with hangar facilities the capability to change out mission modules on particular models namely the TIE/sa bomber. The TIE bomber has an interchangeable mission pod so that at the craft may carry bombs or act as a boarding craft or even a shuttle. With the modular pods the TIE bomber may go from a light bomber with one ordnance pod to a medium bomber by having up to four pods equipped. There is no reason to believe that it would not be possible to swap out power plant and engines in a standard TIE/ln and I TIE/in as the main cockpit is the same between both models. This would allow ship fighter wings to be cannibalized for parts among different models of TIEs. This would not be ideal but when fighting a protracted campaign with little resupply the ability to keep fighters flying may be a godsend.
For the larger ships with hangars they can carry bring more strike craft with them due to the easy storage and compact size of TIEs. The ability to bring a large strike group to battle allows ship captains with far more tactical options then their counterparts who have a reduced fighter wing. The TIE cockpit design allows the crafts to be carried in external racks as well as in large hangars. With the ability to be carried in external racks small imperial warships are able to bring TIEs along with them giving even small escorts and corvettes with their own fighter screens helping to secure the far reaches of the galaxy.
Now I would be remiss to not address the white elephant in the room which is of course that some TIE models lacked shields. This is both a problem but also somewhat overstated as a problem. Now initially when the first TIE models were being released fighter shield generators were somewhat bulkier and drew to much energy from the miniaturized reactor of the early TIE models. This meant that we saw a marked performance drop when equipped with a shield. So to keep up the high performance that was needed out of the TIE series the shields had to be dropped. I say that this problem is somewhat overstated because we have canonical evidence in Star Wars Episode IV during the battle of Yavin, X-Wings seemed to be far less survivable than people pretend to remember as they were being shot out of the sky with single blasts from opposing TIEs.
Now the initial problems with the power supply not having enough energy to power a shield as well as other systems has been solved in the decades since the initial TIE models were released. By modern times all TIEs will either come stock with shields or will have been retrofitted with new power supplies and shields. With shields the TIE series has become somewhat more survivable while still staying agile enough to outperform both Rebel/ New Republic Heavy fighters as well as being able to dance with swarms of droid fighters.
Over the years the simple TIE/ln had been developed and evolved into the likes of the TIE/in, TIE/d Defender and Scimitar assault bombers. Fighter craft that could stand up and even outperform the latest Alliance/New Republic strike craft. As time goes on new variants of the TIE series come out to face the many threats the galaxy throws at the Imperial Navy.
Now within the universe we can argue that the TIE series of star fighters may have some misses but the concept as a whole actually would make a hell of a lot of sense if your trying to supply a space based navy with millions to billions of star fighters. Now I will wholly admit that the TIE fighter doctrine is not effective and must be reworked to make these craft more combat effective but as a whole the concept is actually sound and I'll break down the concept as best I can
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| Many of the prototype and production model TIE strike craft |
The TIE series of strike craft were initially envisioned to be cheap, light strike craft which would be easy to supply to the far flung outposts of the Imperial Navy. After fighting swarms of droid fighters during the Clone Wars the Imperial Navy opted for light fighters that had high agility above all else. This comes from always building your military to fight the last war you fought. TIE fighters would have similar agility to droid fighters but with the superiority of having a manned fighter vs a simple droid brain. They may have been cheap which would have made them easy to buy in bulk but I think the real reason for buying them isnt because of the cost as the Galactic Empire who can build two death stars in a barely over 2 decades alongside the massive number of warships seems to have the industrial base to handle this.
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| TIE/it Punisher |
The true brilliance of the TIE series craft is in the picture above. TIEs are highly modular and therefore are easy to maintain as you can replace parts quickly and easily. This also gives a capitol ship with hangar facilities the capability to change out mission modules on particular models namely the TIE/sa bomber. The TIE bomber has an interchangeable mission pod so that at the craft may carry bombs or act as a boarding craft or even a shuttle. With the modular pods the TIE bomber may go from a light bomber with one ordnance pod to a medium bomber by having up to four pods equipped. There is no reason to believe that it would not be possible to swap out power plant and engines in a standard TIE/ln and I TIE/in as the main cockpit is the same between both models. This would allow ship fighter wings to be cannibalized for parts among different models of TIEs. This would not be ideal but when fighting a protracted campaign with little resupply the ability to keep fighters flying may be a godsend.
For the larger ships with hangars they can carry bring more strike craft with them due to the easy storage and compact size of TIEs. The ability to bring a large strike group to battle allows ship captains with far more tactical options then their counterparts who have a reduced fighter wing. The TIE cockpit design allows the crafts to be carried in external racks as well as in large hangars. With the ability to be carried in external racks small imperial warships are able to bring TIEs along with them giving even small escorts and corvettes with their own fighter screens helping to secure the far reaches of the galaxy.
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| Gozanti with externally mounted TIE |
Now I would be remiss to not address the white elephant in the room which is of course that some TIE models lacked shields. This is both a problem but also somewhat overstated as a problem. Now initially when the first TIE models were being released fighter shield generators were somewhat bulkier and drew to much energy from the miniaturized reactor of the early TIE models. This meant that we saw a marked performance drop when equipped with a shield. So to keep up the high performance that was needed out of the TIE series the shields had to be dropped. I say that this problem is somewhat overstated because we have canonical evidence in Star Wars Episode IV during the battle of Yavin, X-Wings seemed to be far less survivable than people pretend to remember as they were being shot out of the sky with single blasts from opposing TIEs.
Now the initial problems with the power supply not having enough energy to power a shield as well as other systems has been solved in the decades since the initial TIE models were released. By modern times all TIEs will either come stock with shields or will have been retrofitted with new power supplies and shields. With shields the TIE series has become somewhat more survivable while still staying agile enough to outperform both Rebel/ New Republic Heavy fighters as well as being able to dance with swarms of droid fighters.
 |
| TIE Defender piloted by Imperial Ace of Aces Maarek Stele |
Over the years the simple TIE/ln had been developed and evolved into the likes of the TIE/in, TIE/d Defender and Scimitar assault bombers. Fighter craft that could stand up and even outperform the latest Alliance/New Republic strike craft. As time goes on new variants of the TIE series come out to face the many threats the galaxy throws at the Imperial Navy.
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