How Large is the Imperial Remnant Fleet?

Grand Admiral Thrawn has returned to the galaxy. The Shadow Council and his former Captain Gilad Pellaeon is loyally awaiting him with the entire might of what's left of the empire. But how big is this Imperial Remnant Fleet, how many ships do they have left in their arsenal?

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[alecpotato]

Though it’s unknown how big Thrawns fleet or the new republics fleet are, I really hope to see some large fleet battles especially with the advances in CGI

[nathangasti]

"It's not the size of the fleet it's how you use it"-Thrawn

[garavin]

One word: Logistics

It doesn't matter how many ISDs are sitting out there. Even with automation circuits so they can run with skeleton crews, each of those ships inhales millions of tons of hypermatter just to keep the lights on. The remnant would need an immense logistical operation to keep their ships fueled, supplied with air, food, water, etc. They had entire planetary systems dedicated just to supplying the resources to keep the fleet flying. Most of that is either gone or out of reach after Jakku, meaning that they most likely can only field a miniscule fraction of the ships they have on hand.

Add to that the dearth of experienced crews, and even the ships that were operational were likely to be inhabited by less-capable officers and crews. So they could be sitting on tens of thousands of ships, thousands of ISDs, but only able to field a tiny percentage, and that having reduced combat effectiveness due to the quality of leadership and crew competence.

That said, I agree that at this point the Remnant really don't need a lot of ships. The NR is weak and repeating the same mistakes that led to its dissolution two decades earlier. The fact is that militarily, neither organization is much of a threat to the other. The best they can do is snipe at each other while they try to hold onto their respective power centers and rebuild themselves. From that standpoint, Palpatine's contingency plan kind of worked.

[GuardianSage]

If Thrawn's story parallels what happened in the books, then he will rally a decent portion of the imperial remnants to his side, lead a series of hit and run attacks against a number of new republic worlds and forces, and finally die by betrayal of someone whom he thought loyalty and steadfast. I know that it's over simplified but that's the basic gist of it and about as close to the original story as Disney's likely to get. Assuming that they even bother to begin with.

[saviorselfX]

I don’t think Thrawn “lost a step” on Peridia; I think he had one VERY clear objective (get back to the GFFA) and VERY limited resources after nearly a decade of being stranded. He set up a multi-layered rearguard defensive action while preparing to retreat to slow down very capable opponents with powers his forces couldn’t contend with while sacrificing the fewest number of pieces. Even his sacrifice of Morgan Elsbeth was a choice to give up a valuable piece on the board to make sure he still won the game. Even if you say, for instance, “Why didn’t he destroy the tomb while the Jedi were still inside?”—he couldn’t! He needed to pull the Chimaera out of position above the fortress to be able to safely destroy it.

Thrawn won. He achieved his objective. Was it a clean victory? No. But it was far better than anyone else would have managed.

As for how he was portrayed in Rebels … I have my issues with that, but chalk it up to him being the villain in a children’s cartoon rather than a nuanced character in a series of full-length novels written for grown-ups. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[jiffypoo]

The explanation might be really obvious. 80% of the surviving fleet was sent to Exogal to be retrofitted for Palpatine's return. 10% of the fleet was destroyed. 10% of the fleet is being run by warlords.

[dillonquigley]

I don't think Thrawns ego is rising or sharpness is lacking or dropping. I think he had to be more boatsful and egotistical in order to to keep his soldiers in line and the Great Mothers subdued. If anything it could just be rusty and will quickly adapt to the new Republic tactics and doctrine.

[stevena.]

If it's anything like the Mandalorian fleet, numbers will vary wildly from scene to scene and change as needed.

[jeremypintsize]

An unusual but interesting oponent for Thraw could be Kalani - the super tactical droid who refused his deactivation command - if he had ressources, perhaps as a contracted military force for the Verpines... He could be deadly, and Ezra is not a stranger for him...
Some punchlines could be thrown to Thrawn by him:
"You don't know me, but I know you", "It's ironic for the heir to the empire to be destroyed by a fully operational war machine", "I'm the separatists revenge"...

[kan-zee]

Good Question ?
How Large is the Imperial Remnant Fleet ?

Honestly, does it really matter ? It will all be destroyed by the Super Boss Girls Team ...
Jedi Goddess Ahsoka, Sabine Mando-jedi Hybrid, Booty Hera , and the Sith trailer girl Shin Hati with the no support from Money Mothma and her minions.

[NorthyNamey]

Disney really messed up starwars and they don’t care

[thalmoragent]

Seeing Thrawn's tactics play out in Live-Action with good CGI shall hopefully prove to be spectacular. You wager Filoni has read the Thrawn Trilogies?

(Both Canon/Legends?)

[texanchiss]

Think about how much Thrawn has told Pellaeon before he disappeared. I feel the good captain knows a great many things that the rest of the shadow council does not. After all that time in exile, you'd think Thrawn has already figured out a plan once he returned. This presumably means access to bases, assets, and holdings that were already under Thrawn and Pellaeon's control or influence. Idk. I feel the cannon Thrawn campaign will be long and large.

[MultiRiches]

In the comics there was scene where Vader stumbled across the Exogal fleet. The strength Palpatine expressed by showing Vader a glimpse of his future plan was one of the reasons Vader stayed loyal and clung to the dark side

[darthrevan]

I hope thrawn can find some acclamtor assault ships because they are ridiculously fast with a .6 hyper drive speed and can cross the galaxy top to bottom twice on the same tank of fuel and each can also carry plenty of ground forces

[Fadaar]

This brings up something that sci-fi has never really done a good job of showing and that's fleet sizes. Like, the Battle of Endor looked big but if you count it out there's only a few dozen capital ships present. I can't think of any kind of live action work that's ever shown truly massive fleets.

[isaacdunn]

Stuff like this is why i think Disney cannon is stupid. The whole idea of Jakku is totally dumb. Legends may have a lot of wacky stuff in it, but they at least figured out how to realistically sun set the Empire.

[dylanlowers]

Disney Star Wars can never get scale right, everything always feels so small. The fleets are never shown to be a proper size (hell the galactic wide Resistance in the sequels was literally 300 people and a few ships. Ridiculous)
If we follow the old canon, which i am no apologist for, but the post-Endor time was, imo, handled much better. The Empire shouldn't have shot itself in the foot with Cinder, even with vindictive Palpatine it makes no sense and any self-respecting Imperial officer would have seen through the plans and either denied the orders or would have flat out mutinied. Mutiny does not equate to joining the Rebels, (Battlefront 2) but rather these men who spent their whole lives and careers serving what they thought was a good purpose wouldn't turn to destroy it for seemingly no reason.
So you'd have Imperial splinter factions run by warlords, then you'd have the 'official' successor to Palps leading likely the largest faction. This faction makes peace and is either forced to assimilate or forced to at least demilitiarized (not sure the status in current canon). The other factions can reasonably be ignored since they are splintered, weak, and fighting each other.
It would be reasonable for a large majority of large ISD class ships to be abandoned, scuttled, or left in reserve at ship yards to be used for parts. The splinter factions, depending on their control and access to resources, could reasonably field a relatively large fleet of these ships, but some might not have the capabilities and use smaller frigates and support vessels (Moff Gideon).
The largest user of the Imperial Star Destroyer (and Super Star Destroyers which seem to be largely neglected and misunderstood in disney canon) would ironically be the New Republic themselves. The NR in the legends lore did exactly this, even utilizing TIE fighters and ground vehicles, and that makes PERFECT SENSE. Why WOULDN'T a struggling faction on the brink of victory use ships and resources that are literally in front of them? Sure, maybe the NR doesn't have the crew capabilties to man these ships but there are also work arounds like minimal crews, droid crews, and assuming there are enough Imperial defections or prisoners, use them to man some. With a GALAXY-WIDE REPUBLIC, I am sure they could find enough people. Demilitarize later, sure, but the pace it happens in the Disney canon feels much too quick. The US demobilized after WW2 but we still understood there were existential threats that needed to be dealt with and kept some of its military force. It is extremely stupid for the New Republic to instantly do this

[thewicked_witch]

I believe that, like the world between worlds, it has significant ties to the father son and daughter the force. Thrawn is either bringing back dead warriors or weapons. When you think about it, the reason why he's going back to Dathomir is ground work for the night mother's is already done it's a place strong with the force and has alter they could probably mend using witchcraft but I could be wrong. Well, in the rebel series, each planet had about 6 star ship destroyers hovering about in the planets atmosphere or above. Each star destroyer carries Imperial I-class Star Destroyers had over 37, 000 crew on board— 9, 235 officers and 27, 850 enlisted personnel. The complement of 9, 700 stormtroopers added to a total of 46, 785 crew and passengers.

[orokusaki]

Makes me wonder, all those star destroyers at Exegol may not have all been built there, eh? Perhaps they were mothballed and refitted.