Stormtroopers

**Stormtroopers**, also referred to as **First Order stormtroopers**, were elite infantry units in the military forces of the First Order. Attached to the Stormtrooper Corps of the First Order Army, the new stormtrooper generation was composed of human conscripts who were trained from birth and identified by serial numbers instead of personal names. This form of training, combined with years of Imperial-inspired propaganda, worked to produce an army of super-soldiers who were personally loyal to the First Order and Supreme Leader Snoke. Like their predecessors, the original stormtroopers of the Galactic Empire, the First Order's troopers were equipped with stark white body armor; its design reminiscent of the Imperial style as well as the version worn by clone troopers of the Galactic Republic. Additionally, the First Order provided its soldiers with the F-11D blaster rifle the successor of the Imperial E-11 blaster rifle and SE-44C blaster pistol as their standard weapons.

First Order stormtroopers were the culmination of Brendol Hux's vision of the perfect soldier. Hux, a former Republic officer who joined the Imperial ranks after the Clone Wars, admired the combat prowess displayed by the Jedi Order and Grand Army of the Republic. As a commandant in the Imperial Academy, Hux was unimpressed by the Empire's Stormtrooper Corps its members, according to Hux, lacked the skill and discipline of their clone predecessors. He therefore concluded that stormtroopers should be trained from birth like the clones and Jedi Knights who came before them. After the Empire's defeat in the Galactic Civil War, the First Order adopted Hux's methods to create an invasion army, its purpose to conquer the galaxy.

After Hux's death, the stormtrooper training program was overseen by his son, General Armitage Hux, and Captain Phasma both of whom served in the First Order's commanding triumvirate along with Kylo Ren, the Supreme Leader's dark side apprentice. By promoting ruthlessness, yet also improvisation on the battlefield, Phasma endeavored to turn her trainees into the finest soldiers in galactichistory. As a result of her methods, First Order stormtroopers were considered more dangerous than their Imperial precursors.

In spite of General Hux's confidence in the loyalty and reliability of First Order stormtroopers, one trooper deserted the Corps. Having witnessed his comrades massacre an entire village on Jakku during the waning days of the cold war, FN-2187 renounced the First Order before ultimately defecting to the Resistance. Aided by the renegade stormtrooper, Resistance forces succeeded in destroying the First Order's superweapon, Starkiller Base. FN-2187's defection led to a disagreement between Hux and Ren, the latter using the rogue trooper's treason as grounds to question the loyalty of all stormtroopers. Furthermore, Ren considered the possibility of replacing the general's soldiers with a clone army, a notion that Hux opposed.

After the fall of the New Republic, the First Order moved to seize control of the galaxy by utilizing the vast military resources at its disposal. At the same time, the Supreme Leader personally oversaw the First Order's efforts to annihilate the Resistance from his flagship, the *Mega*-class Star Dreadnought *Supremacy*. Serving as the First Order's mobile capital, the Dreadnought housed a large force of stormtroopers in addition to various military personnel. During the First Order's pursuit of the Resistance fleet, Ren assassinated Snoke shortly before Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo crashed the MC85 Star Cruiser *Raddus* into the *Supremacy* at lightspeed, killing many stormtroopers in the process.

With Snoke's death, Ren succeeded his Master as the new Supreme leader

upreme Leader of the First Order. At Ren's command, the First Order deployed an army of variant stormtrooper units, known as snowtroopers, to the remote world of Crait where the last of the Resistance took refuge after the destruction of their fleet. Although the battle concluded in victory for the First Order, a small group of survivors escaped from Ren and his stormtroopers with the help of the Jedi Rey.