How Big Was The Sith Fleet? Imperial Navy/Sith Empire

This will be almost impossible to answer, mainly because more than one Sith group was an empire with a navy.

Now, when we hear “navy”, we think of ships on the sea, but one of the definitions of a navy is, a fleet of ships. Also called a squadron or armada.

I’ll cover each group briefly. Another fact to consider is that many of the numbers are guesswork, as Palpatine didn’t want people to know how many ships he had. 

We know that no matter which group we’re talking about. They never had enough ships to control the galaxy. 

But, they had enough to scare everyone into submission. And that’s not including the Death Star.

How Big Was The Sith Fleet?

We don’t know. The average estimate is roughly 25,000 Imperial-class Star Destroyers. Each housing over 9,000 crew members and 13 Super Star Destroyers. 

So, how did that work? First, an Imperial-class Star Destroyer is so much more than a ship.

It’s like a hazardous and heavily shielded mobile country, with a small army of fighters to rain down death. A single Imperial-class can sufficiently control 60 planets in a system.

And thanks to hyperdrives, these monsters can quickly be relocated within the area they were assigned to monitor. Not every planet needed to be afraid, though.

The ones on the Outer Rim would rarely see any ships from the Empire. The most famous exception was when C3PO and R2-D2 came to Tatooine with the plans for the Death Star.

How Many Ships Are In The Sith Fleet?

We don’t know for sure, but I have found a list of Darth Hargrev’s fleet. He’s one of the Sith who would declare himself Emperor between episodes six and seven in legend lore.

Darth Hargrev’s fate is unknown, but it’s safe to say Snoke wouldn’t have left him alive for long. Especially once he found Ben Solo and began training him. 

Here is the list from Darth Hargrev’s fleet.

Capital Ships

• Imperious-class Star Destroyers: 3
• Pellaeon-class Star Destroyers: 30+
• Harrower-class Dreadnoughts: 150+
• Ardent-class Fast Frigates: 200+
• Terminus-class Destroyers: 50+

Logistics Vessels

• Gage-class Transports: 120+

There are several transport and dropship classes, but they’re unnamed.

Emperor’s Space Station, is where the Emperor resided and he had only one built.

Small Craf

• Predator-class Fighter: Thousands
• Sith-Imperial Starfighter: Thousands 
• TIE/ad Starfighter: Around 10
• TIED/D Defender: Around 70
• B-5 Decimus: Thousands
• Imperial Shuttle: Thousands

Some of these ships would have been repurposed from previous battles with the rebels. However, some were made under Darth Hargrev’s orders.

Things You Might Not Know

The Sith Order has been around for 5,000 years. Here’s what we know about each group that became an Empire.

The first Sith Empire wasn’t a true empire. Instead, they would call themselves the first Sith Lords. These groups would fight the Jedi in The Great Hyperspace War.

Darth Tanis created a superweapon on one of the Sith homeworlds, Malachor. The Jedi invaded, but this led to the weapon being activated and killing everyone. The battle was called the Great Scourge of Malachor.

The Sith would attempt to make more empires, but they always fell to the wayside until 5ABY, After the Battle of Yavin.

A millennium after the Hyperspace War, Exar Kun would create a new Sith Empire. This would catch the Jedi by surprise, as they believed the Sith had gone extinct. 

The Brotherhood of Darkness is the final Empire before Darth Bane made the Rule of Two. The Brotherhood claimed that all Sith are equal but contradicted itself due to infighting. 

The Galactic Empire is the first one fans are introduced to in the films. This is where we see Darth Sidious play the long game perfectly.

Almost no one knew Palpatine was a Sith, and Darth Vader died shortly after killing him. The Rule of Two seemed to be finished.

Palpatine never intended for the Empire to exist without him. And so, he never appointed an heir. This, more than anything, in my opinion, crushed the Empire as it was taken over by infighting. 

This brings us to the First Order, Final Order, Sith Eternal, and the last canon Empire. Unfortunately, though Sidious commanded all three of these groups, we didn’t get to see much of them.

The First Order was the spearhead and a distraction. The Final Order and Sith Eternal were supposed to bring back the Sith Empire. We all know how that ended.

Now it’s time to look at legend Empires. Darth Krayt wanted to make an army of Sith. Where he was the only Darth and the rest served under him.

We also have the Eternal Empire, it was ruled by a Sith (Emperor Valkorion). But instead of using this empire for the Sith, he attempted to reshape the galaxy himself and attacked both the Sith and the Republic. 

In Conclusion

No matter which era of Sith you’re interested in, they always had a spaceship to ruin your day. Unfortunately, we’ll probably never know every detail about all of them.

Legends isn’t dead, and fans keep coming up with excellent content explaining Star Wars lore. Disney is also giving us more to look forward to every year.

Will we see a new Sith Empire? Probably. Will it have anything to do with the previous ones? Maybe.

But the important thing is that there will always be Sith Lords because the Light Side can’t exist without the Dark.

Thank you for reading, and remember: The Force will set us free.