The second season of The Mandalorian has provided all kinds of twists, turns, and visits from old friends from past Star Wars installments. But its most recent episode—“Chapter 14: The Tragedy”—introduced the most unexpected development yet: After decades of headlong frontal assaults while wildly shooting from the hip, stormtroopers have at last stumbled upon basic tactics.
Stormtroopers have long demonstrated a shocking lack of tactical agility for the supposed shock troops of the Empire. Even victories like that on the ice planet Hoth came with destroyed vehicles and dead troopers scattered across the snow. Charging forward and yelling "Blast 'em" seemed to be the limit of their ability to employ fire and maneuver against their enemies. It's as if their strategic development had begun with the assault wave tactics of 1914 or the Soviet human waves at Stalingrad and then just stayed there forever. If you don't have to worry about recruitment and retention, body counts aren't a metric that drive organizational change.
Over the centuries, most armies have come to some basic conclusions: It's preferable to attack the enemy from the side, or flank, than from the front; machine guns, or other weapons to suppress the enemy, are sort of a must-have; and a leader on the ground should direct combat actions. Massing all available fires on the enemy and then maneuvering to find a weak spot in their defenses is pretty much the best path to success. While common to all military forces in the real world, these concepts have to this point escaped the Imperial stormtrooper corps.
From actions aboard starships and the Death Star(s), to Hoth, to Endor, stormtroopers have only ever rel ..
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