Commando droids were some of the most advanced and dangerous battle droids in the Clone Wars. Fast, smart, agile, and equipped with vibroswords and blasters—they could go toe-to-toe with clone troopers and even Jedi in the right situation. But for all their skills, they were still relatively easy to take down once you got past their armor.
So why not just make them out of beskar?
We’ve seen what beskar can do, blocking lightsabers, shrugging off blaster fire, surviving hits that would tear most materials apart. If the Separatists had access to something like that, wouldn’t it make sense to armor up their elite droids and let them wreak havoc on the battlefield?
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1. Beskar Was Incredibly Hard to Shape and Work With
One of the biggest reasons commando droids were never made of beskar is simple: it’s incredibly hard to forge properly.
In Star Wars: 100 Objects, author Kristin Baver explains just how difficult it is to work with beskar, even for the Empire, which had the resources of an entire galaxy at its disposal:
“The Empire had difficulty finding an armorer capable of shaping the metal into its strongest form.”
That line alone tells you a lot. Even after taking control of Mandalore and seizing beskar from its people, the Empire still couldn’t properly forge it without the right knowledge and skill. That craftsmanship wasn’t something you could just replicate in a factory—it was something passed down through Mandalorian tradition.
We see this in The Mandalorian series, too. Whenever Din Djarin brings raw beskar to the Armorer, she melts it down and reforges it into precise, balanced armor. It’s not just about durability—it’s about technique, tradition, and knowing how to bring out the metal’s full strength. And it’s clear that knowledge is rare.
If the Empire struggled to make full use of beskar, there’s no way the Separatists—who had no cultural connection to Mandalore—could mass-produce it into battle droid armor. They didn’t just lack the material; they lacked the people who knew how to shape it.
So even if they had somehow stolen enough beskar to coat a battalion of droids, without Mandalorian smiths or someone like the Armorer, they’d be left with metal blocks—tough, but useless in the middle of a fight.
2. Using Beskar Would Have Meant Picking a Fight with Mandalore
Another reason we never saw commando droids made of beskar comes down to Mandalore itself, and the political balance the Separatists were trying to maintain during the Clone Wars.
At the time, Mandalore was officially neutral. It led the Council of Neutral Systems, a coalition of worlds that refused to take a side in the war. The Confederacy of Independent Systems (CIS), led by Count Dooku, actually wanted to bring Mandalore—and its warrior culture—to their side. This included quietly supporting groups like Death Watch, a Mandalorian splinter faction that hoped to restore the planet’s more aggressive, warrior-driven past.
So imagine what would’ve happened if the Separatists suddenly started forging entire legions of droids out of beskar—one of the most sacred and closely guarded materials in Mandalorian culture. Even if they managed to steal it, it would have looked like a direct assault on Mandalorian identity. That would’ve pushed both the New Mandalorians and Death Watch into open opposition, possibly uniting them against the CIS.
In short, using beskar wouldn’t just be a manufacturing issue—it would be a political disaster. It would’ve risked turning Mandalore into an enemy instead of a potential ally.
The CIS already had a hard time keeping up appearances. Starting a war with Mandalore by mass-harvesting or weaponizing its most sacred resource would’ve been a direct insult, especially while Dooku was still pretending to play the diplomatic game.
And it’s not just headcanon—this fits right into what we see in The Clone Wars. Dooku works behind the scenes with Death Watch, using subtlety, manipulation, and hidden support. If he wanted to control Mandalore, he wasn’t going to do it by stealing their legendary metal and slapping it on mass-produced droids.
3. Beskar Was Way Too Expensive for Mass Production
The Clone Wars wasn’t just a military conflict, it was an economic one. Both sides were building massive armies, churning out ships, vehicles, and weapons on a galactic scale. Everything had to be efficient, repeatable, and relatively cheap. And that’s exactly why beskar was never going to be part of the standard droid production line, especially for something like commando droids, which were meant to be mass-deployed in specialized missions.
Beskar is one of the rarest metals in the galaxy. It comes almost exclusively from Mandalore and its moon Concordia, and even then, it’s difficult to extract and purify. That rarity alone would make it nearly impossible to gather enough to armor even a single battalion of droids—let alone the thousands the Separatists would need across hundreds of systems.
But it’s not just about scarcity. Beskar is also expensive. The cost to mine, smelt, transport, forge, and shape the metal into durable plating would be astronomical. And that’s assuming you even had the specialists who knew how to do it properly, which, as we already covered, the CIS didn’t.
The entire point of commando droids was that they were cheaper than hiring living mercenaries, more disposable than clones, and fast to produce. Giving them beskar would’ve flipped that logic completely. Instead of being efficient infiltration units, they’d become the most expensive assets on the battlefield—and a huge liability if they were lost or captured.
So even if the CIS could get their hands on beskar, it simply wouldn’t make sense to waste it on units meant to sneak in, cause chaos, and possibly get blown apart minutes later. In the grand scheme of the war, beskar-armor droids would’ve been a massive drain on resources, and not worth it.