TIE Defender Variants

In Legends, it was Admiral Zaarin who designed the TIE/d Defender for an attempted coup to take over the Empire. For Canon, it was Grand Admiral Thrawn who oversaw the project in hopes of destroying the Rebels with starfighter superiority. Regardless of the source, the TIE Defender ranks among the most well-armed and expensive starfighters ever deployed. In both histories, however, the Defender would never find enough political support for mass production. Instead, these fighters became relegated to special forces, rarely seen in large battles, and only used for specialized missions.

Legends armament was simple: 4 laser cannons in the lower wingtips, 2 ions cannons in the wingtips above the cockpit, and 2 warhead launchers near the cockpit. Most manuals listed the typical TIE laser tips under the cockpit as the warhead launches. I'm not sure how those could hold or even act as missile launchers, but that was the reference.

Rebels reintroduced the TIE Defender with a slightly different layout. Laser cannons replaced the upper ion cannons in some scenes. More interesting though was that the artists moved the warhead launchers for Elite version. Instead of being imbedded, you can see 2 missiles sticking out from the center of each wing panel. This to me makes more sense compared to launchers under the cockpit.

However, the overall design of the TIE Defender has changed a lot since we first saw it in 1994.

When introduced, the TIE Defender was a really beefy ship. The solar panels were very large, almost covering the whole ship. The center hull seemed thick and heavily armored. Lastly, the canopy extended forward with an additional ring of thin windows at its base. This was probably the most significant and noticeable feature as it seemed like the wing cutouts positioned perfectly around the cockpit for better visibility.

Overall length is unknown, but I expect it's longer than the 8.8 meter reference at the time. We also saw this version with either 3 thrusters or a single thruster, probably because of graphical limitations of games at the time.

I believe it was in The Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels (1996) that we first saw the slimmer version of the TIE Defender. Now Doug Chiang's artwork still showed the "Big Chonk", but the actual blueprints showed a much slimmer and smaller ship. The wings were shortened, cockpit reduced, and the hull was narrowed. All of this made the ship more in-line with other TIE variants. Also, this was the first time they introduced the "tri-ion engine" designation with 3 rear thrusters.

Depending on the source, you would typically see a length of either 6.6 meters or 8.8 meters.

Rebels reintroduced the TIE Defender, but with some changes to the wings. The basic model had its wings extended slightly and a new length of 9.2 meters (some sources still had 8.8m). The center panels had vertical separator bars instead of the x-shaped pylons, of which I'm not a huge fan. They also reduced the thrusters down to 2 to fit the "Twin-Ion Engine" moniker.

Lucasfilm also gave us the TIE Defender Elite with crazy, extremely long wings and a length of 11.3 meters. It looks really stretched to me. This version had the embedded warheads in the wings.

A few designs showed an embedded cockpit sphere. I've seen this in the New Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels as well as in artwork for the Fantasy Flight X-wing version.

The game Star Wars Squadrons gave us another variant that mixed the Rebels design with older x-shaped panels of the "Slim Jim".

I've also seen at least one image of a TIE Defender without the rear cutouts in the wings, making it look like a 3-winged TIE Interceptor.

Depending on the artist, you'll see a few variations of thrusters. Sometimes the 3 thrusters are in the outer ring of the rear hatch, other times on the wing pylons. And sometimes, even the center hatch itself has the 3 thrusters. Then of course, Rebels gave it a 2-thuster design. Finally, early graphical limitations of PC games basically gave it one large thruster.

The other oddity is how it fits all those missiles just under the cockpit. The artworks I added here show it either firing mini-missiles like the TIE v1, or it sporting missile launchers attached to the sides of the cockpit. Personally, I would prefer attached launchers.

With all of the differences in design (not just thrusters and warheads) which design do you all prefer? What would your perfect kit-bashed TIE Defender look like?

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