Without a doubt the most advanced and capable starfighter to participate in the Galactic
Civil War, and one of very few contemporary fighters able to easily outmatch the T-65
X-Wing, the Sienar Fleet Systems TIE/D, or TIE Defender is a cutting-edge space superiority
fighter, designed to serve in a wide variety of roles and environments, and to ensure imperial
victory in even the deadliest engagements.
The fighter was born from a reconsideration of imperial tactics following the Battle of
Yavin.
It was decided that the empire’s normal strategy of overwhelming force, would be supplemented
with one inspired by the Rebel Alliance, the use of fewer, more-advanced and individually
powerful space superiority fighters, and under the supervision of the Imperial Navy’s most
senior officials, including Grand Admiral Demetrius Zaarin, work began on a project
which would apply Imperial technology and funding, to Alliance combat doctrines, to
produce a powerful starfighter, reserved for only the finest pilots in the Imperial Navy.
After months of development the result was the TIE Advanced X7, a highly sophisticated
and extremely expensive spacecraft, boasting levels of speed, resilience, versatility and
firepower far in advance of any fighter seen before, and on the personal order of the Emperor
himself, the fighter was approved for mass production, under the name ‘TIE Defender’.
9.2 Meters long with a highly distinct spaceframe, the Defender features similar quadanium panels
to the TIE Interceptor, but distributed in a unique triple-spoke configuration, which
led Rebel Alliance pilots to nickname the fighters “Trips”.
The limited availability of TIE Defenders meant that opportunities to train on the fighter
were limited, and only high-ranking TIE Interceptor pilots, who had both achieved the title of
Ace, and survived at least 20 combat missions, were permitted to pilot the craft.
Many of the Defender’s features are holdovers from the short-lived TIE Advanced X1, including
the addition of a Class 2 Hyperdrive, and a surprisingly resilient deflector shield,
serious advantages which were normally absent from Sienar’s TIE Series vessels.
The sheer brutal effectiveness of the TIE Defender in close quarters combat cannot be
overstated, the ship is incredibly agile, able to absorb substantial damage with its
deflector shields, and carries a weapons loadout more synonymous with that of a gunship, than
with any conventional starfighter.
The Defender carries 4 Heavy laser cannons, 2 Ion Cannons and a pair of warhead launchers
compatible with both concussion missiles and proton torpedoes, and the ship’s high-end
solar collectors feed power directly into the it’s capacitors allowing the fighter
to maintain a high rate of fire, whilst carrying only a small on-board power plant.
The Defender is able to serve in the role of a fighter-bomber or light-torpedo boat,
and its wide mission profile extends to include both anti-capital and ground-assault assignments,
but the fighter’s true strength lies in space superiority, where the ship’s powerful
arsenal combined with its lightweight frame makes the Defender one of the most lethal
dogfighters ever designed, and vindicates its reputation as the so-called ‘X-Wing
Killer’.
The TIE Defender’s unparalleled ability in space combat made it extremely popular
among the upper echelons of the Imperial Navy, and for a time it was hoped that the ship
would replace the standard TIE as the mainstay starfighter of the Galactic Empire.
Unfortunately, the many features and sophisticated technologies installed on the Defender made
the ship extremely expensive to produce, costing four time more to assemble than a standard
TIE Fighter, and requiring far greater expenditures for advanced pilot training and complex maintenance.
Given the severe budgetary restrictions suffered by the Imperial Navy during the development
of the Second Death Star, it was decided that the widespread deployment of TIE Defenders
was financially impractical, and the Empire elected to maintain its established doctrine
of overwhelming force in space combat until such time as greater funding was available,
though with the decimation of the Empire’s economy and infrastructure in the Battle of
Endor, such a time would never come.
In spite of the ship’s limited deployment across its imperial career, the Defender’s
complete dominance in starfighter combat, and merit as a work of imperial engineering,
has earned the ship a well-respected place in the history of starfighter design, and
throughout the final years of the Galactic Civil War, there became no greater symbol
of dread to the pilots of the Rebel Alliance, than the sight of an approaching TIE Defender,
and the X-Wing’s tallied on it’s hull.