Missile

A missile, sometimes called a rocket, was an explosive projectile that was fired from some type of missile launcher. Missiles were used in both space combat and ground warfare. Missile launchers were equipped on vehicles and starships such as the droid gunship and the Republic Attack Gunship. They were also used by battle droids, clone troopers, and Mandalorian warriors. Examples of missiles include proton torpedoes, concussion missiles, and discord missiles.

Missile weapons were considered a complement to blasters and other energy weapons because of their unique characteristics. Missiles were capable of homing in on a target, even moving around intervening obstacles in order to hit it. Thanks to the use of acceleration compensators and tensor fields, missiles could withstand turning accelerations of up to 10,000 G, such as when making a 90-degree turn within a turning radius of one meter. When fired from a planetary surface they could hit a target that was hidden by the horizon. Missiles could also follow a preprogrammed trajectory or receive targeting updates via encrypted guidance signals, transmitted by either forward observers or orbiting craft.

However, missiles were much easier to dodge than blasters and were vulnerable to being shot down. Some missiles took deliberately evasive flight paths or otherwise used their agility to avoid being shot down. Missiles were also vulnerable to a number of electronic countermeasures such as sensor jammers, seeker warheads, chaff, and Sensor Inverters.

Missiles could be fitted with a variety of different warheads, such as proton, EMP, antimatter, or hard radiation, depending on the needs of the mission. Missile warheads could have variable yields, and the resulting explosion could be omnidirectional or focused in a particular direction. The missiles used by Republic attack gunships, for example, concentrated their explosion in a two-degree cone.

Missiles came in a variety of sizes with corresponding differences in their destructive potential. A B-wing could carry missiles powerful enough that their shock waves would knock whole groups of starfighters out of the sky if used in an atmosphere. Capital ship-scale missiles like those carried by Imperial-class Star Destroyers could cause explosions big enough to boil lakes or collapse mountain-sized factories, while proton torpedoes like those carried on Acclamator-class assault ships were used in Base Delta Zero bombardments which could melt the upper crust of a planet. In the Battle of Umbara, the Umbaran Militia utilized long-range missiles with 100-megaton warheads (supplied by the Separatists) to defend their capital from the Grand Army of the Republic.

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