ARMY
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If the Navy was rejuvenated since the rise of the New Order, the Army was revived from the dead.  During the days of the Old Republic the Army degenerated into a poorly trained police force with fancy uniforms.  They performed garrison duty on member worlds, often as a barrier between squabbling locals.  The Navy was responsible for getting the Army to its destination and for picking up what as left.  There was lip service paid to the concept of orbital support, but the Navy was stretched too thinly to afford sitting in stationary orbit for the duration of a surface campaign.  The Navy jealously guarded its starfighters, so the Army was denied any effective means of maintaining an orbit free of enemy spacecraft once the Navy departed.  Morale was often low and the quality of Army personnel bordered on non-existent.

With the New Order, the Army was completely overhauled.  Rigorous training and recruitment programs were re-established, and the mission of the Army was expanded.  Drop missions into hostile territory were considered to be routine for normal troopers rather than the province of a few elite units.  Training for complex assaults was the norm, and Imperial doctrine specified the Navy's mission to be support for surface forces during critical phases of an operation.

Doctrine further specified that permanent garrisons or units expecting surface campaigns of significant duration would have significant Naval assets, such as TIE fighters, attached to the Army units for the whole of the mission.  These assets were determined well in advance of the mission and soon standardized so an Army officer could know what he had to work with for a particular type of mission.

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Changes in Civilian Command Structure

The Army used to be almost exclusively under the command of the planetary governments of ht worlds on which they served.  this was due to necessity more than anything else; most worlds had an arrangement where by they paid half the expenses and provided half the material of any Army unit engaged in operations on their world, unlike the Navy whose expenses were paid for by the Republic as a whole.  This one difference was perhaps the major cause fore the decline of the Army.  The worlds which needed help form the Republic and were not among wealthiest continually complained about the cost of surface forces deployed on their planets.  the average amount spend on the Army plummeted while the navy's expenditures remained constant.

With the New Order, and especially since the abolishment of the Senate, the Army has become the physical manifestation of the Empire throughout the galaxy.  Whether black-clad Imperial soldiers or white-armored Stormtroopers, the Imperial Army has grown into the mailed fist that pounds the thousand-thousand worlds of the Galactic Empire into submission.

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The Army Command Structure

The Army took a different track from the Navy when it experienced its phenomenal growth.  The army kept its ranks the same, but increased the number of subordinate officers for each rank above.  This decreased the ratio of officers to troops and gave the Imperial Army a very lean fighting force.

The establishment of the New Order gave the Army the opportunity to clear out its deadwood as well as remove those officers who might be ideologically opposed the the new regime.  Over three-quarters of the Army's officers were weeded out during the first days of the New Order.

Since the Battle of Yavin, the two forces have been moved closer together as  regular Army detachments have been assigned to Navy vessels to create more complete combat units.

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