These vehicles date back to the Old Republic. Built by Kuat Drive Yards, the HAVw A5 juggernaut had a major role in military forces. During its time, it was the leading design in combat vehicles, but nowadays AT-ATs have taken its place.
The juggernaut came about when the Old Republic was looking shaky at the foundations. Planetary governments used juggernauts as the mainstay of their own defence forces, realising that the Old Republic would soon fall. There was no one buyer for juggernauts; they were sold to anyone who could afford them. Thus private companies acquired them, along with some Hutt clans. But when the Empire took control, it used the juggernauts for its own military purposes. The vehicles were usually given to governors on outlying planets who could not get any AT-ATs. The juggernauts proved versatile in their missions, and the governors were very pleased with the results.
Juggernauts had very tough armour plating, and with its size it could rival the AT-AT for sheer power. Juggernauts are twenty-two metres long and fifteen metres tall. They use five sets of wheels to move, which allow them to achieve speeds of up to two hundred kilometres an hour. But because it uses early technology, the vehicle’s drive system requires the juggernaut to slow to twenty-five kilometres an hour just to turn. The configuration of the juggernaut allows for two drive stations, one at either end of the vehicle. This means that juggernauts can reverse whenever they need to, making it so that they do not always have to turn around.
To operate the juggernaut, two crew members are required, along with six gunners. The gunners receive their target information from a single trooper in the observation tower. The weapons on the juggernaut are as follows: a turret-mounted laser cannon and port and starboard laser cannons. These weapons have the same power as those of the AT-AT, but they have only two-thirds of the range. In addition, there is a turret-mounted medium blaster cannon, which is more powerful than those on the chin of the AT-AT. When troops and vehicles are leaving the juggernaut, two grenade launchers, each with a magazine of ten grenades, lay down covering fire for them. These are located on independent turrets.
Juggernauts have enough capacity to transport fifty troops, or light vehicles such as speeders bikes. This is more than an AT-AT can carry, although juggernauts are more limited to the terrain they can handle.