Droid tank

The term droid tank or tank droid referred to any type of tank that operated without the assistance of a live crew. Much like droid starfighters, they were operated through the use of a droid brain; these could either be independently-controlled or governed by remote interface with a tactical computer; in this way they were much like ordinary battle droids and their starfighter counterparts. Tank droids were utilized throughout the history of the galaxy, from the Old Sith Wars to the Yuuzhan Vong War.

The Arakyd Industries XR-85 tank droid, just one of the types of tank droids, was created during the Galactic Civil War. The XR-85 tank prototype was built before Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn's campaign against the New Republic. The original prototype was too expensive to be mass produced. A year later, Imperial engineers refined the XR-85 and a contract was signed for this model to be mass produced. The XR-85 was first designed to deal with civil unrest in Imperial planets, but they proved to be some of the Empires most powerful machinery so they were sent to the front lines. The XR-85 was driven by a droid brain, which made it even more impressive than it already was. The vehicle was on tracks. It was approximately 32 meters long and over 30 meters tall. It was double the size of an AT-AT walker. Its top speed was 70 kilometers per hour, but was nearly unstoppable. Its main weapon was a frontal heavy particle cannon. Its range was 5 kilometers, and had the power to level bunkers with one shot. There were also two turbo-blasters also firing to the front. Also there were 4 heavy repeating blasters, 2 facing front, 2 back. The XR-85 was the most successful droid controlled tank of the Galactic Civil War. Its pirated Industrial Automaton R7 droid brain was top of the line. It even had intuition programming. Though there was no substitute for a living pilot, it was far better than other similar machines.

Text and facts from the “Droid tank/Legends” article on Wookieepedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Modified for this site.