Article on the Scarif Raid in "ROGUE ONE"

[David cgc]

In the Scarif battle, the capital ships of the Rebel Alliance again did nothing. They took hits and were getting destroyed, while they sat on their weapons. What the hell.

It's just not obvious because they focus on the starfighters because they're so much cooler than the big ships, and because the more the Rebels shoot, the more it looks like they're winning (I also wouldn't be surprised if in some of the faster-paced shots, Rebel fire was toned done because it would make it harder to distinguish what they're actually trying to communicate). I just scrubbed through and found a couple shots where the flagship is bombarding the Shield Gate, and the shot of the fleet as the Death Star arrives has corvettes and gunships just spewing lasers, with hardly a fighter in sight.

 

[Reverend]

Right, but the point of my original post was that Tarkin and Vader or no Tarkin and Vader, they knew that the Rebels might know the data was located on Scarif, which is why Krennic was there. One way or another the Imperials would learn that Galan had compromised the security of the plans and would have taken action.

No, they did not know that at all. All Krennic knew was that Galen had passed messages to Saw. He went to Scarif to check Galen's work and see if he could find the extent of the leak. He didn't know what Galen had passed on and it's likely his search would have turned up nothing as so far as we know, Galen didn't compromise any of the system's security. What he did was pass a physical message that was delivered by hand. Krennic had no way of knowing Galen had built an inherent flaw into the design. So they had no clue that's what he'd done, let alone know where to start looking for it, let alone how to undo it.

The only reason the alliance came up with an answer so fast was because thank's to Galen's message and Jyn, they already knew what the flaw was. They just needed to plans to find a way to exploit it. Tarkin's people only figured it out as the battle was happening and only by analysing the Rebels' attack pattern (the repeated runs on the exhaust port.)

None of this points to the Empire knowing the Rebels would be coming from Scarif. The only ticking clock for the operation was someone reporting their stolen shuttle as missing and/or it's clearance codes going out of date. Either could have been a matter of hours or days. Since that was their only way to infiltrate the base, it was now or never.

 

[DonIago]

It sounds like while you might be disagreeing with my rationale for why there was a ticking clock, you nevertheless agree that there was a ticking clock?

 

[Reverend]

It sounds like while you might be disagreeing with my rationale for why there was a ticking clock, you nevertheless agree that there was a ticking clock?

Yup.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

No, they did not know that at all. All Krennic knew was that Galen had passed messages to Saw. He went to Scarif to check Galen's work and see if he could find the extent of the leak.

Actually Vader told him to make sure Galen didn't compromise the Death during his meeting with Krennic, so Galen sabotaging the Death Star was at least considered.

 

[Reverend]

Actually Vader told him to make sure Galen didn't compromise the Death during his meeting with Krennic, so Galen sabotaging the Death Star was at least considered.

It really depends on how one interprets the word "compromised" in this context. It could indeed mean literally compromised the actual design, but I think more likely is compromised it's secrecy. As is "find out hat else he's leaked to the rebels" which is consistent with Krennic immediately pulling all of Galen's dispatches for examination.

If there was a serious concern that he'd sabotaged the weapon itself, they'd have held off the final checks and made sure before ever firing it again.

 

[DonIago]

DARTH VADER:I expect you to not rest until you can assure the Emperor that Galen Erso has not compromised this weapon in any way.

To me that sounds like a reference to the design of the weapon, not its secrecy. Or possibly both.

 

[Solariabsg25]

Yeah, once Krennic starting sifting though Galen's files with a more critical eye (keep in mind, he was convinced he'd broken the man decades ago) it would only have been a matter of time before he found the vulnerability and found a way to guard against it.
I mean it shouldn't have been too hard to divert waste heat and radiation away from a single small exhaust port (there must have been others!), so that there isn't a nice convenient shaft that drops straight down the the reactor. Fixing the vulnerability in the reactor itself would take more time, but the immediate danger and pretty much the only hope the Alliance ever had getting close to that thing without being vaporised would have passed.

Of course it's a bit of a mute point since in that scenario, Krennic is alive and thus the rebels never got the structural plans that tell them about the existence of the shaft in the first place.

Short version: without the Scarif raid, the galaxy would have been pretty much buggered.

You could simply build passive defences such as struts at various points across the trench to make an attack-run practically impossible, while adding additional anti-fighter turbolaser turrets on the surface around the trench.

 

[Ithekro]

The reactor is what is unstable. As seen in Return of the Jedi, they only patched the problem with a power regulator, meaning that would need to be destroyed first before slamming the reactor with just about anything to blow it up. The First Death Star would have been destroyed by a raid blowing up a proton bomb in the reactor, or maybe even just a thermal detonator. You just have to get the team to the reactor somehow. And given how the security seems to be at Imperial bases....a team could probably pull that off with a stolen shuttle and some stormtrooper armor.

 

[Reverend]

^Exactly. The exhaust vent was just *a* point of access, not something Galen was directly aware of since he didn't have full access to all the structural blueprints (otherwise he'd have had Bodi smuggle those out instead!)
The reactor module is still inherently unstable and without knowing exactly what Galen did to make it that way (probably a million tiny things in order for it to go undetected), to properly fix it they'd have to basically start over from scratch.

 

[DonIago]

Clearly he moved a decimal point somewhere.

 

[Ithekro]

Soooo.....a two decimeters wide exhaust port. Like an 8 inch across hole? You could rattle a thermal detonator down that.

 

[DonIago]

I'm pretty sure that happens in "Shadows of the Empire"?

 

[Reverend]

It actually happened in the 2nd or 3rd(?) draft of the script. Instead of the "one in a million" shot, Luke had to park his ship, get out and drop a bomb down the shaft by hand (while getting into a lightsaber fight with Vader of course!)

 

[fireproof78]

It actually happened in the 2nd or 3rd(?) draft of the script. Instead of the "one in a million" shot, Luke had to park his ship, get out and drop a bomb down the shaft by hand (while getting into a lightsaber fight with Vader of course!)

I'd watch that.