We’ve all seen it. Stormtroopers charging in like they’re elite soldiers, only to miss every single shot and get taken out by teddy bears with slingshots. Meanwhile, we’re told these guys were trained by Clone Commandos, literal war machines who survived the fiercest battles of the Clone Wars. So what happened? Did the Empire just forget how to train soldiers?
Clone Troopers Were Bred from a Fearsome Warrior, Stormtroopers Were Just… People
The first thing we have to understand is that Clone Troopers and Stormtroopers were different from the very beginning.
Clone Troopers were created from the DNA of Jango Fett, a bounty hunter who could go toe-to-toe with Jedi and survive. These clones weren’t just based on a strong template; they were literally made to be soldiers. From the moment they finished their accelerated training, they were deployed into real battles across the galaxy, fighting under Jedi Generals in the most brutal war the Republic had seen in generations.
We saw this clearly in The Bad Batch when Clone Force 99 was brought to Mount Tantiss and forced into a brutal live-combat test against early Phase Zero Dark Trooper prototypes. These weren’t standard droids—they were enhanced, relentless, and specifically designed to outmatch organic soldiers.
But instead of being overwhelmed, the Bad Batch used their years of real battlefield experience to adapt on the fly. They didn’t rely on textbook tactics, they improvised, flanked, exploited weaknesses, and moved like a unit that had survived the worst of the Clone Wars. That’s something you don’t get from a training manual or drill sergeant screaming in your face. That’s combat instinct, built from living through ambushes on Umbara, sieges on Ryloth, and skirmishes in the Outer Rim.
Now compare that to the average Stormtrooper.
Once the Empire rose, the cloning program was shut down. Instead of improving the system that produced elite fighters, the Empire went the cheap route: they started conscripting or recruiting regular citizens. No enhanced DNA. No years of war-hardened experience. Just everyday people tossed into armor and trained just enough to follow orders and shoot straight—well, hopefully.
And while clone troopers were forged in the fires of the Clone Wars, Stormtroopers came up in a different time. By the time they filled out the ranks of the Empire, most of the big galactic conflicts were over. There weren’t as many large-scale wars, which meant they never got the same level of battlefield experience the clones did. That alone explains a lot.
Elite Clones Trained the Empire’s First Soldiers, Then Disappeared
But that phase didn’t stick around for long. The Empire didn’t care about creating skilled soldiers—it wanted loyal ones. Training stormtroopers to be as independent, creative, and tactically smart as clone commandos? That was a threat, not an asset, in Palpatine’s eyes. So the Empire shifted priorities fast.
Instead of focusing on quality, they scaled up quantity. The clone commandos—who had firsthand experience in war—were slowly pushed out of the training process. Recruits were now drilled through rigid, standardized academy routines, not taught by hardened veterans who actually knew how to win a fight.
That’s why the early batches of Stormtroopers might’ve had promise, but the further you get from the Clone Wars, the more watered-down they became. No more Jango DNA. No more battlefield instincts. Just average people with a blaster and a helmet, trained by bureaucrats following a manual.
This shift wasn’t just implied—it was deliberate Imperial policy. In The Rise of Darth Vader novel, Palpatine lays it out clearly: the Jedi were a lesson. He says: “The Jedi order is a lesson to us that we cannot permit any agency to become powerful enough to pose a threat to our designs, or to the freedoms we enjoy. That is why it is essential we increase and centralize our military, both to preserve the peace and to protect the Empire against inevitable attempts at insurrection.”
Palpatine didn’t want independent thinkers or seasoned warriors with opinions. He wanted total control. Palpatine started reshaping the entire Imperial military. Non-clone officers and crews were to be trained in centralized Imperial academies, filled with candidates drawn from standardized flight schools across the galaxy. These weren’t soldiers forged in war, they were students molded to obey.
