From Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope onward, the X-wing fighter remained one of the Rebels’ strongest weapons against the Empire. Faster, more heavily armed and capable of light speed without assistance, they canonically outmatched the TIE fighters they battled on almost every level. Despite this, the Empire never adapted the vessels for their own use. Star Wars has always featured technological changes over time, and a First Order adaption of the X-wing would have a great deal of sense. And yet they repeatedly chose otherwise.

The canonical reason is simple, and yet says a great deal about the complexities of the Star Wars universe as well as many fatal flaws that led to the Empire’s destruction. As it turns out, the Empire lost the X-wing because they reneged on a bargain to its creators. Details can be found in Rebel Starfighters Owners’ Workshop Manual, a canon sourcebook that covers the history of the Rebellion's starships.

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Corporate Competition Mattered More Than Design

The T-65B X-wing, better known as the ship Luke Skywalker flew in A New Hope, was developed by Incom Corporation, a Republic-era weapons firm, specifically for the Imperial Navy. Having been tasked and contracted to manufacture the ships, the company found itself undercut by a rival, Sienar Fleet Systems, who offered TIE fighters as a much cheaper alternative. The Empire claimed they had discovered flaws within the X-wing design that prompted them to rethink the contract, ultimately going with Sienar's designs instead.

In truth, Sienar had deep connections to the Emperor through a Byzantine connection of merchant and banking interests. They cut a favorable deal to create a huge number of fighters very inexpensively, and Incom was left with an order of expensive ships that no one wanted. The Rebellion was able to buy them at a discount, and even the odds against the Imperial Navy in a single action. The results were catastrophic for the Empire, both to individual ship pilots and large-scale fleets.

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Losing The X-Wing Was Typical of the Empire’s Military Blunders

Autocratic governments like the Empire tend to change the rules when it suits them to do so, which has the effect of making unnecessary and very powerful enemies where none are needed. Darth Vader used the same modus operandi to leverage Lando Calrissian in Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, as did Governor Tarkin when he took the Death Star from Orson Krennic in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Betrayal was common practice for the Empire, and just as turning on Lando and Kennic carried devastating repercussions, so too did their treatment of the company working tirelessly to provide the Imperial forces with the most advanced fighters in the galaxy, Incom. The moment they became inconvenient to their employer, the Empire turned on Incom.

Similarly, the Empire’s focus on superweapons like the Death Star meant they had fewer resources to spend on other military endeavors. That led them to the less expensive TIE fighters rather than the very vessels that ended up destroying many of those same superweapons. Were Vader flying an X-wing variant at the Battle of Yavin, for example, the Rebellion might have been crushed and the Death Star spared. Furthermore, their inability to acknowledge error and course-correct led them to repeat the same mistakes over and over again, as the First Order did by creating Starkiller Base, only to see it destroyed once again by a small group of X-wings.

Errors like the kind made against Incom aren’t fatal, and had the Empire understood the value of what they’d lost, they may yet have prevailed. But the same reasons they dismissed the X-wing in the first place justified their willingness to stick with the TIE fighters, even when it was clear that doing so gave them no advantage. The X-wing’s distinctive image symbolizes their blindness as much as the Rebellion’s tenacity.

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