The Rebel Alliance were the sole driving force opposing the Empire, and it was very
much a situation of the big powerful enemy being too strong to take on at once. For this reason,
the rebel alliance opted to take part in smaller, targeted, and carefully planned missions which
would all work together to cripple sections of the Empire, making them an easier target while
staying on the move. But with the amount of men which the alliance needed to pose
even the smallest threat against the empire, as well as all the weapons and vehicles, how much
exactly did it take to run this army and pay for their various missions in taking down the Empire?
I’m about to break it down so smash the like and subscribe buttons, check out the StarForceOne
discord, and let’s get into it. So in Andor season one, we got to see a very intense arc which showed
us some of the methods of the Rebel Alliance. Around 5 BBY, the Rebels, in their early stages,
executed a covert operation led by Senator Mon Mothma to steal a whole sector's payroll
on Aldhani. With a six-person infiltration team, including the double agent Lieutenant Gorn who
worked with the Imperials as well as Rebels, and late addition in Cassian Andor, they planned to
utilise the local festival for cover to perform a night raid and get away with the credits.
The operation faced many challenges, including an unexpected firefight during the heist and multiple
casualties. After a successful escape, the team regrouped, which is when Andor
eliminated a potential traitor, Arvel Skeen, and departed for Niamos, his now-occupied home planet.
The payroll that this entire mission was centred around was a total sum of 80 million credits,
which sounds like it could be a lot of money.. But since we don’t know much about the Rebel’s
budgets, it could also be very little. So in order to gauge how significant this haul was,
we’ll use it as an isolated example of Rebel fund acquisition and see just how far the money
would stretch when spent on various vehicles, weapons and so on. Of course this will be rough,
because we don’t have any solid numbers in canon or legends, but it should be
a good estimate that scales up in relation to how many similar heists were performed.
What we’ll do to figure this out is look at a couple battles the rebels were in,
and try to calculate the rough cost of each of them. First up we’ll break down the Battle
of Yavin, the iconic event which ended in the destruction of the first death star.
This entailed a total of 30 fighters and bombers working together in an attempt to
destroy the death star before it was able to successfully destroy the rebel base,
holding some of the most powerful leaders of the alliance movement.
There were 22 X-Wings, which cost 65,000 credits each used, so 22 of them would be
1,430,000 credits. Alongside these starfighters were 8 Y-Wing bombers, which were the same price,
meaning that 8 of them would cost the Rebels 520,000 credits. Although many people joined
the alliance for free out of a passion against the empire, there are still various costs
relating to the aircraft and pilot’s care which the rebels need to account for. So to
estimate the cost per pilot we’ll just see the salary of a USA airforce pilot which is $100k.
Translating that into credits through the method we discovered through this video here,
which I highly recommend you check out, this would be around 75,000 credits per pilot,
totalling 2,250,000 credits. This means that in total, the battle of Yavin required
the Rebel Alliance to spend 4,200,000 credits. They’d be able to perform 19
of these attacks on the death star in order to fully deplete the credits gained on aldhani.
Turning to the battle of Scarif, this was a much bigger battle which involved many types of ships,
since it was a do-or-die effort to deal the most powerful and crippling blow to
the empire that the rebels ever had; attaining the plans to a flaw in the
death star to then take advantage of it and destroy it. The main cruiser in the battle,
the MC75 ship from the Mon Calamari Shipyards, run the rebels 88 million credits per ship,
so it would take more than the entire aldhani raid just to afford one of these huge cruisers.
Three Nebulon B frigates were utilised in the battle, one of which were tragically demolished
by Vader’s ship as soon as it arrived, and these cost 8.5 million credits each, so all three would
come out to 25.5 million credits. Four Braha'tok gunships were also present, offering extremely
heavy firepower, costing 1.4 million each, meaning that the full squad would be 5.6 million credits.
The Sphyrna-class of corvette - one of which got that legendary kill against not just one but two
star destroyers - retailed for 1 million credits each, so the three of them participating in the
battle would total 3 million credits, and the six CR90 corvettes, one of which was Princess Leia’s
ship, were priced at 1.2 million credits each, bringing them to 7.2 million credits altogether.
The 12 GR75 transport ships, which were 180,000 credits a piece, came out to 2,160,000 credits.
Part of the main assault, 42 X-Wings, running the alliance 2,730,000 credits were joined by
22 Y-Wing bombers, which were worth 1,430,000 credits. The 2 U-Wing support crafts which were
worth 65,000 credits each came out to a total of 130,000 credits. We can’t know exactly how
many men were involved in this battle, so I won’t try to factor those costs into it,
but it’d be safe to assume it’d be a few dozen million credits.
All of these massive numbers means that the battle of scarif was a giant expense for the rebels,
though was no doubt worth it coming in at a total price of 135,750,000 credits. If we take away
the enormous pricetag of the MC75 cruiser, they actually only need 47,750,000 credits,
meaning that the raid on aldhani was actually an incredibly important source of resources
for the rebels, enabling them to engage in many small operations and even a few large battles.
This highlights what an amazing opportunity the raid was - a few soldiers hiding out for
a few months, resulting in almost a hundred million credits, largely covering the cost of
destroying the death star. Now here’s where things get really rough - we can take the
average between the costs of the battle of scarif and yavin, multiply that number by
the rough amount of major battles which took place in the Empire’s reign, and through that
get a rough idea of how many credits the rebels needed for their many years of stealth operations
and battles. Some battles will be large and some smaller like Yavin, so the average will
give us a rough picture of how much things may have been. There were around 25 major battles,
and the average credit value is 69,975,000, which brings us to an estimate of One billion,
seven hundred forty-nine million, three hundred and seventy-five thousand (1,749,375,000) credits.
This would require twenty aldhan-like raids to amass such a stack of credits, which would
take a very long time and a lot of deep imperial connections. Obviously there’s more to factor in
here such as weapons, bombs, fuel, and so on, but there aren’t any solid numbers on any of that, not
even on the amount of troops the rebels had, so this is unfortunately the best we’re going to get.
Even though the estimate of credits for the whole army might be very dodgy, we can at least see how
far the credits from aldhani could stretch, and it was a really excellent opportunity for the rebels.