Division / Legends A Division was an important tactical level of military command and organization , widespread throughout the galaxy . However , the term was not a standard designation in the Grand Army of the Republic or the Imperial Army , where comparable formations were normally designated as Legions and Battlegroup s . History . The use of large military units analogous to divisions is probably as old as the existence of large armies , and it is not clear when the precise term " division " was first used . During the New Sith Wars , it is known that infantry divisions served in the Sith military led by the Brotherhood of Darkness — two additional divisions reinforced Lord Kaan ' s army on Ruusan during the campaign against the Army of Light , but an individual Sith Lord was considered more than the equal of an entire division of non - Force - sensitive troops . The Army of Light , in contrast , used the term Legion for its main field formations . In the centuries after the Ruusan Reformation , sectors and important member worlds of the Galactic Republic typically retained defense forces at Division strength . It seems that the Republic usually supplied half the funding for these units , and Imperial sources later portrayed them as forming the devolved and debased field units of a theoretically unified army , but in practice , they were autonomous local militias . Often limited to ceremonial and police duties , lacking effective heavy equipment or interplanetary deployment capabilities , they were normally under the operational command of the planetary governor or sector Senator , and their loyalties were entirely to their homeworld or home sector — or , worse , to the individual grandee who was their paymaster and commander . During the Clone Wars , local forces came ever more under executive control , but the Imperial Army subsequently reformed the existing Division structure radically , in order to undermine the local loyalties entrenched in many formations : units of the Army , it was felt , should be components of a galaxy - wide machine , unquestioningly loyal to the Imperial command , and capable of fighting with equal determination wherever they were required . To this end , Divisions were reorganized as Battlegroup s , and amalgamated into Corps based on deep - space depot ships . Only a few Divisions retained their old identities , units where the divisional " esprit de corps " was particularly strong , or where continuity was useful for propaganda purposes . For instance , the Assault Armor Division was typically the first unit to receive new armored vehicles such as the AT - AT . During the Galactic Civil War , the ideologues of the Rebel Alliance laid a marked stress on the ideals of the Old Republic and local autonomy , so it was perhaps inevitable that they would continue to use Divisions as their primary large - scale military formations . Although Alliance Special Forces , the troops answering directly to Alliance High Command , were typically deployed in small , flexible mission - specific teams , their large - scale organization was based around the Division ; the total number of SpecForces divisions is said to have been somewhere around ten . Other Rebel divisions were attached to local Sector Forces , and fought as combat formations in the field : for example , in Atrivis sector , where the Rebel army on the planet Mantooine was organized into several small Divisions . Rebel Divisions were designated by numbers , apparently irrespective of whether they were SpecForces or Sector Force troops : the 132nd Forward Division in Atrivis sector was probably part of the army on Mantooine , while the 117th Light Infantry Division seems to have been a SpecForces unit , serving as a pool from which commando strike teams could be formed . Under the New Republic , Divisions continued to serve as important army formations , and then — if not beforehand — specific Divisions were assigned to support naval task forces , such as the 42nd Republican Guard Assault Division , which served with the Fleet ' s 32nd Cruiser Squadron . In 36 ABY , a " full division " appeared to consist of at least 40 , 000 troops . Alternative usage . It appears that within the Imperial military , and perhaps specifically with regard to clone troops , the term " division " could also indicate much smaller groups of soldiers . The " division " of clone stormtroopers subverted by Grand Moff Trachta as part of a coup attempt in 0 BBY was as a batch of a hundred troopers , but it is not clear whether the term in this context indicated a fixed number , or a detail of varying size . Either way , this usage may have influenced the use of alternative Legion and Battlegroup terminology within the Grand Army of the Republic , Stormtrooper Corps and Imperial Army . Behind the scenes . Although Divisions were absent from the standard Imperial Army command structure , this page nevertheless depends heavily on the Imperial order - of - battle section in " The Imperial Sourcebook " , where Divisions are discussed in the section on the Battlegroups that replaced them . " " uses the term " divisions " to denote the first groups of clone troopers sent into battle from Kamino , and says that " millions more " were to follow ; this may have been intended by Simon Beecroft and Curtis Saxton to mean that the Grand Army of the Republic consisted of millions of divisions , but the official interpretation , as presented by Leland Chee at StarWars . com , is that " millions more " refers to numbers of individual clone troopers : " millions of clones , not millions of divisions . " Quite apart from this , the term " division " may be used here for small units , as it is in " " . It should also be noted that " Riders of the Maelstrom " gives an average of one million Imperial Army troops per sector at the height of the New Order , which would suggest a total of a billion troops across the galaxy at that time . On page 97 of the novel " " , Leia Organa Solo makes mention that forty thousand troops equates to a " full division . " The reference is made concerning Killik troops , however ; it is unlikely that she is aware of the exact structure of Killik military units , implying that 40 , 000 indicates either an average amount or the numbers for an equivalent New Republic / Galactic Alliance unit .