Grand Admiral Thrawn’s return at the climax of Ahsoka heralds the beginning of a Star Wars story long in the making—whatever Dave Filoni has planned in adapting one of the most famous stories in the old Expanded Universe, Heir to the Empire, across TV shows and even a movie. But another element from that saga could answer a very important question: doesn’t a Grand Admiral need a few starships?
From what little we already know about the Imperial Remnant’s plans to rally around Thrawn’s return, there’s few indications of just what kind of fleet he will command beyond his flagship, the Star Destroyer Chimera, that accompanied him, Ezra, and a whole bunch of space whales to Peridea and a whole other galaxy at the end of Star Wars Rebels. But Heir to the Empire and its sequels, Dark Force Rising and The Last Command, offered him a mystery weapon that stretched across generations of Star Wars even before we really knew those generations: the Katana Fleet. And maybe it could again, depending on just how much Filoni and his team take from Timothy Zahn’s legendary novels.
What Was the Katana Fleet?
Decades even before the Republic was made aware of the existence of the Kaminoan clone army, the Senate backed multiple elaborate projects to support and enhance the effectiveness of the various, smaller defence forces aligned with the Republic and its member worlds. One such project, completed in 46BBY—14 years before the events of The Phantom Menace—was the Katana Fleet.
A 200-ship strong fleet made entirely of Rendili StarDrive dreadnaught heavy cruisers, the Katana Fleet was valuable to the Republic not because of the ships themselves or its size, but because of the manpower required to sustain the fleet. Before the Clone War, the Republic Judicial Forces’ Starfleet was a fraction of the size of Republic navies at the height of its reach and influence. The Katana Fleet, carrying complements of experimental walkers to assist in ground assaults, should’ve needed roughly 16,000 officers to fully crew an armada of its size, but through the use of experimental, remote-controlled computer networks known as slave-rigging, the Katana dreadnaughts could be operated by a crew a fraction of the size, roughly 2,000.
In a time where the Republic had no standing army beyond the peacekeeping forces of the Judicial branch, the Katana Fleet—also known as the Dark Force, both for the cruisers’ dark paint jobs but due to the fact they were all dimly lit, due to each vessel requiring limited life support and crew space—represented what could be the future of Republic military actions, given increasing stressors in the Outer Rim such as piracy and the slave trade representing growing issues for the Republic: a dominant Fleet that could protect Republic interests, at the fraction of the sentient effort.
Why Did It Go Missing?
The Fleet, however, almost immediately faced disaster. During its maiden voyage, a Katana crew member contracted a hive virus—a deadly disease that drove the victim mad before killing them. As the virus tore through the sentient crew, in a moment of panic, the fleet activated its slave systems—which only helped to infect the command crew as well; in their own madness, they sent the fleet into blind hyperspace jumps. The entire fleet was lost, and immediately became a political embarrassment for the Republic.
Decades later, as the Clone War began, Republic Intelligence believed that the viral outbreak was in fact not an accident, but deliberate hostile action at the hands of a CIS-affiliated actor: Zeta Magnus, a mutant Arkanian geneticist, and longtime enemy of the Republic even before he allied with the Separatists at the outbreak of the war.
How Did Thrawn Find the Katana Fleet?
By the time the Galactic Empire had fallen apart after Endor—50 years after the Katana Fleet launched—the fleet, as with many things in a galaxy where historical record is often short lived, had become legend. But when a smuggler crew rediscovered a handful of the lost fleet, interest in it from the New Republic, Imperial Remnant, and various Warlord states saw the potential of the Fleet as a tipping point for the uneasy balance between galactic powers.
It would take another five years after Endor for the fleet to be found, when the returned Admiral Thrawn made locating the fleet a priority for his campaign. Able to secure information from one of the smugglers that found the missing ships, Talon Karrde, Thrawn and the New Republic—both sides already spread thin by losses incurred during the early days of the Thrawn Campaign—chased after the fleet, culminating in an engagement in the Halm Sector for control of the vessels.
Although the Battle of the Katana Fleet was a tactical victory for the New Republic—with the combined efforts of Rogue Squadron, the New Republic, and the resistance fleet of Garm Bel Iblis driving off Thrawn’s forces—it was already over even before the skirmish began. One dreadnaught was destroyed in the battle, and just 15 more remained to be recovered by the New Republic, combined with the six in Iblis’ own fleet. Thrawn had already managed to secure the remaining 178. With the revelation that Thrawn had managed to uncover Spaarti cloning cylinders from Palpatine’s reserves at Mount Tantiss on the planet Wayland, the New Republic’s initial belief that it would take Thrawn months or even years to train a crew to use the Katana Fleet dissipated what little hope the Republic had. Thrawn used his bolstered arsenal to immediately launch a string of assaults across New Republic space, the decades-old ships still overwhelming any Republic counteroffensive through sheer strength of numbers.
What Happened to the Katana Fleet After the Thrawn Campaign?
The Thrawn Campaign flared up even stronger after the Battle of the Katana Fleet, turning the tide in the Grand Admiral’s favour. But multiple factors, including Thrawn’s betrayal of the Noghri—exposed to them by Leia Organa, and eventually leading to his assassination at the hands of his Noghri bodyguard Rhuk—saw the campaign end in New Republic victory after the Battle of Bilbringi.
We don’t know what explicitly happened to the bulk of the Katana Fleet after Thrawn incorporated it into his navy, however. After Bilbringi, Thrawn’s right-hand man Gilad Pellaeon withdrew the Grand Admiral’s remaining forces into the Unknown Regions, and the loss of Thrawn fractured the Imperial Remnant even further, instigating a civil war between the various Warlords vying for control of what remained. Presumably, a combination of ships either destroyed during the infighting or recovered by the New Republic and integrated into its own Navy rendered what was actually left of the Katana Fleet significantly lessened in the years after the Thrawn Campaign concluded—nullifying the mythical threat it had once held across the galaxy for nearly half a century.
Could the Katana Fleet Return to Star Wars Canon?
Although the Katana Fleet at any point in its history across the Prequels or Post-Original-Trilogy era has yet to be canoniSed in current Star Wars continuity, the Imperial Remnant’s need for ships is a minor ongoing plot thread in what we’ve seen of the post Return of the Jedi storytelling that we have.
Unlike in the Expanded Universe, the New Republic of current canon has adopted a policy of breaking down captured Imperial vessels, rather than simply integrating them into its own forces. A need for more forces across the Remnant Military was established with the reveal of Moff Gideon’s Shadow Council in The Mandalorian’s third season—with Pellaeon, representing Thrawn’s interests to the Council, believing that Thrawn’s return would herald the resurgence of the Remnant’s military power. However, as we saw in Ahsoka, Thrawn’s return to the galaxy brought with it more ground forces than naval operations: just the heavily re-repaired Star Destroyer Chimera, and what remained of its TIE Fighter wings after its time exiled on Peridea, were all that he brought.
It’s possible then that we will simply see Thrawn make use of whatever Pellaeon and the Shadow Council already has in terms of capital ships—and have them simply explained as having been kept in hiding waiting for his return—whenever we get to see what Star Wars has planned for the brewing conflict between the New Republic and the Remnant. But there’s still plenty of opportunity for current continuity to introduce an idea like the Katana Fleet, a weapon that would turn Thrawn into an even greater threat than he already is, backed by the mysterious magicks of the Nightsisters of Dathomir, and his seemingly undead soldiers. Whether he needs the Katana Fleet to be such a threat, however, remains to be seen.