When Did The Empire Replace The Clones, And Why?
When Sheev Palpatine declared the First Galactic Empire (“with thunderous applause”), the clone troopers of the Republic became Imperial stormtroopers.
At first, it seemed that nothing apart from the name had changed. Early stormtroopers still wore the same phase II armor as they had done at the end of the Clone Wars. Helmets and chest plates continued to bear the colorful markings that some of the clones had added to show their individuality.
By the time of Star Wars Rebels, not only had the armor changed, but the former clones of Jango Fett were more or less gone, replaced first by volunteers and later by young men and very few women who were often brutally forced into military service. But when did this transition happen, and why? According to books, comics, and video games of the former Expanded Universe, this transition took quite a while, as by the time of the Battle of Yavin, around one third of all stormtroopers were still based on Fett’s DNA. And there were more cloning facilities than just the one on Kamino. Information on this matter is much thinner when it comes to the official canon. Still, there are some events that let us roughly pinpoint when the cloning process stopped:
In the comic book Darth Vader, issue 2 from 2017, two former clone troopers have the following dialog:
The story of this comic takes place shortly after the events of Revenge of The Sith, which means that Palpatine stopped the cloning process soon after he became Emperor. Only the last batch of clones that had probably been ordered before the end of the Clone Wars and were already “in production” were to be delivered to the new regime. After that, the cloning facilities on Kamino were closed down.
Why The Empire Replaced Clones With Naturally Born Humans
Well, there seem to be several reasons for that. The first an probably most obvious one is the accelerated aging of the clones. In order to get them battle ready, the Kaminoans created copies of Jango Fett that aged twice as fast as a normal human, meaning that when the first troops were delivered to the Republic, the soldiers seemed about 20 years old. (Sifo-Dyas ordered the creation of the army around the the time of The Phantom Menace). So, at the end of the war, an average clone soldier seemed about 26 years old. Adding to this the 19 years of the reign of the Empire and a clone would seem over 60 by the time of the destruction of the first Death Star. Not necessarily an age for fighting a civil war (although some clones were still active as instructors in the Imperial academy at that time).
But there is more to this than just the accelerated aging. Maybe this process led to other problems even at a younger age. In James Luceno’s novel Tarkin, which takes place five years after ROTS, a clone stormtrooper damages Vader’s meditation chamber, which leads the Dark Lord to say, “Perhaps you are aging too quickly to remain on active duty.”
This leads us to the next point: After giving Order 66, Palpatine activated the inhibitor chip in (nearly) all of the clones. This not only led to the clones turning against their former generals, but also to a total und unquestioning loyalty of the former Republic troops to the new Emperor. But this loyalty came with a cost: being robbed of their free will, the soldiers suddenly lacked the creativity and strategic thinking that had helped and saved them so often before and became mere cannon fodder, blindly following orders when their brutal commanders sent them into battles. They simply became less efficient, and although there was no big galactic conflict anymore in the early times of the Empire, still many stormtroopers died in local battles simply because they were no longer able to perform at peak excellence. So rather sooner than later, these losses had to be replaced with soldiers who had free will and a passion to fight for their Empire.
Which brings us to the last reason that there were hardly any clones by the time of the original trilogy: In Jason Fry’s junior novel Servants of The Empire – The Secret Academy (2015), Brendol Hux – the father of Armitage Hux form the sequel trilogy – gives the following speech to a bunch of young cadets:
'"The clones’ nature posed a weakness, however,' Hux said. 'Because they were genetically identical, they were vulnerable to the same biological agents and pathogens—and, indeed, Separatist scientists spent much of the war seeking to create bespoke viruses that would target the clone armies.'"
During the Clone Wars, Palpatine could hold these scientists at bay, because he was controlling both sides. But once the Separatists were gone, there was a risk that some rebellious mind would create a bio-weapon capable of wiping out thousands of clones. This, in addition to the high costs of keeping up a cloning facility when there was no actual need for it, may also be a reason why Palpatine ordered no more clones and used “cheaper” human labor for his army instead.
During the early days of the Empire, many regarded the new order as a symbol of peace and order and fell for the Imperial propaganda to join the army. When the tyranny of the Empire later became more and more obvious, moral and the willingness to enlist sank rapidly, and young men were forcefully taken from their homes to fight for a regime they no longer believed in, ultimately leading to the not-so-elite stormtroopers we see in the original trilogy.
But the Empire did think of ways to remedy this. Again, Brendol Hux:
"'We can train stormtroopers from birth, as the clones and Jedi were,' he said. 'Over generations, through careful observation and selection, we will create an army that has all the clones’ strengths but none of their weaknesses. Stormtroopers utterly loyal to the Empire who see it as their family—because that is what it will be."
Which directly leads us to the stormtroopers of the First Order.
Source(s): CBR