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A platoon was a small-scale military unit, typically consisting of a few dozen soldiers, commanded by a lieutenant.

Galactic RepublicEdit

In the Grand Army of the Republic, a standard platoon of clone troopers consisted of 4 squads, each led by a sergeant, a total of 40 soldiers, led by a Lieutenant. Giving a total of 41 clones to a platoon. The platoons were known to be under the established strength due to battle losses. Four such platoons formed a company.

Among the clone commandos of the Special Operations Brigade, however, the equivalent unit was a troop consisting of five four-man squads and just twenty men.

There were also platoons of 24 troopers in the Army.

Galactic EmpireEdit

In the Imperial Army, the basic structure of the standard platoon remained very close to what it had been in the GAR: four squads, each consisting of eight men plus a sergeant, with four platoons forming a company; but whereas under the Republic the platoon's commanding Lieutenant had been included within the 36-man detail, he was now supernumerary along with a Sergeant Major who served as platoon adjutant, for a total of thirty-eight personnel.

Line platoon - 38 men organized in four squads; the standard infantry platoon.
Assault platoon - 38 men organized in two line squads and two heavy weapons squads was the basic strength, with the heavy weapons squads deploying something like eight E-Webs between them. Often, however, additional heavy weapons details were attached to the platoon: one three-man detail armed with medium repeating blasters was common, for an overall strength of 41 men but up to three such details could be added, or two additional heavy weapons details. The assault platoon was sometimes also known as a heavy weapons platoon.
Artillery line - 38 men organized in four sections, with a total of four heavy or medium launch tubes, or eight light artillery pieces.
Repulsorlift platoon - 56 men, and eleven vehicles: four repulsorlift squads with two repulsorcraft each, plus a command element with two light transports for the Lieutenant and Sergeant Major, and a support vehicle. The two command speeders had two further crew each, while the support craft carried twelve soldiers: four crew, all of whom were also trained as mechanics, and eight other technicians. A heavy weapons repulsorlift platoon was organized similarly, but the vehicles were outfitted with heavier armament, and the component units were classed as heavy weapons repulsorlift squads.
Armor platoon - 34 to 42 men, with numbers varying depending on whether the unit was heavy or light armor (eg. AT-ATs or TX-130T fighter tanks). A heavy armor platoon had four heavy armored vehicles, each with a crew of four or five, while a light armor platoon had eight light tanks with crews of three. Additional to these, each armor platoon had a command tank for the Lieutenant, plus two supporting HTVs each carrying seven personnel: three control crew, all of whom were trained mechanics, and four specialist technicians, respectively specialists in weapons, armor, electronics and engine systems.
Special missions platoon - 38 men organized in four squads; two of sharpshooters, one heavy weapons squad, and one of engineers. Unlike other elements of the Imperial Army, Special Missions soldiers were designed to operate autonomously at the platoon level, deployed on missions where a few crack troops were required rather than a major intervention; as a result, their platoon organization was flexible, with squads exchanging troopers as required, and the platoon was often reorganized as three units with a more equal distribution of troops and skills.
Scout platoon - 29 men, organized in two lances of speeder bikes (known collectively as a scout squadron) plus two line squads. Typically, the Lieutenant commanded the biker scouts, replacing the sergeant in one lance, while the Sergeant Major led the infantry. The augmented scout platoon in a Special Missions Company was rather different in composition, consisting instead of four lances of scout troopers plus a Lieutenant and Sergeant Major, both with their own speeder bikes, for a total of 22 men.

InsigniaEdit

In practice, platoons tended to depart from these theoretical standards on a regular basis. Formally, a platoon could be augmented with an extra squad, but reinforcements and extra items of equipment were distributed among platoons as they became available, regardless of whether the result corresponded to anything on the order of battle. In the field, platoons also exchanged troops and material between themselves as required. In practice, this meant that platoons were often more heavily armed than their size would suggest, sometimes carrying the equivalent firepower to a full company.

StormtroopersEdit

In the Stormtrooper Corps, it was possible that some stormtrooper units were organized along the same four-squad platoons structure as the line forces of the GAR and the Imperial Army, but there is better evidence for a platoon-strength unit of forty-five men: such formations probably consisted of five squads in the manner of the troop used as the platoon-size unit within the GAR's earlier Special Operations Brigade, but with the squad strength enhanced to match the Army's standard nine-man unit.

The nine-man stormtrooper squad was certainly known to have been standard by 9 ABY, but it is known that squad size could be smaller than this, although it is unclear whether this indicated any significant variation in the overall size of the platoon, or if variation tended to be within a relatively stable platoon matrix. A forty-five man platoon might have consisted of squads of nine, five or three men, assuming that the squad strength was equal, which was not of course the case in army heavy weapons platoons.

Specialist stormtroopers were certainly organized into unusual unit sizes: Scout troopers were organized in 10-man squadrons or 22-man platoons as just mentioned, while spacetrooper platoons consisted of forty troopers, operating in conjunction with the five-man crews of Gamma-class assault shuttles.

By 22 ABY, however, forty troopers organized in ten four-man squads comprised the strength of a full company in the 501st Legion, now fighting for the Empire of the Hand. It therefore appears that the platoon had at least partially disappeared by this date in at least some stormtrooper units, although it is not clear when this process began.

Other examplesEdit

The Balawai militia used platoons of 24 men.
Yuuzhan Vong warriors also used platoons.

AppearancesEdit

SourcesEdit

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