The TERRIFYING Battle Droid That Could Replace Gideon's DARK TROOPERS - SD-6 "HULK"
838The SD-6 HULK battle droid was an infantry droid that was used by military forces around the galaxy, from all the way back centuries before the Fall of the republic, the Clone Wars, The Imperial Era and through to the New Republic. This droid was so deadly and dangerous, that it was immediately placed one of the most restricted tiers of the Black Market, being available to only the dodgiest and most slimy criminals in the galaxy.
So, I’m going to breakdown exactly what these ferocious battle droids could do, and how they were connected with the Imperial Dark Trooper program. The SD-Series battle droids were recently canonized by The Disciples of Harmony reference book and the Dark Troopers were of course recognized by the mandalorian Season 2, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see the HULK droid make an appearance next season.
The SD-6 Hulk droid battle droid was fourth degree battle droid manufactured by Balmorran Arms. And just to quickly recap for those of you who don’t know what the different “droid degree levels are”, i’ll quickly list them out.
Class 1 or first degree droids are droids that worked in the fields of mathematics, physicals, science and medicine and tended to be very obedient to their masters. These included: medical droids, biological science droids, physical science droids and mathematics droids.
Class 2 or second degree droids were ones programmed for engineering and other technical purposes. These of course included astromech droids, exploration droids, environmental droids, engineering droids and maintenance droids.
Class 3 or third degree droids were droids designed to interact with humans.
These included protocol droids, servant droids, tutor droids and child care droids.
After that is Class 4, or fourth degree droids which is what the HULK battle is classified as. These are the ferocious droids programmed to fight and to kill. Almost every class 4 droid carried weapons. They include, Security droids, gladiator droids, battle droids and assassin droids.
Finally, there's a class 5, but these were just simple labor droids that no human wanted to do.
Basically they included general labor droids, and hazardous service droids.
So moving straight back to the SD-6 HULK droid, they were manufactured a whopping size of 3.5 metres in height and the same in width.
As for weaponry, the HULK units were each equipped with two E-web repeating blasters, one on each arm, as well as two Ion gun rifles, mounted on rotating shoulder joints. Yeah, you can definitely see why these beasts were restricted and only obtainable through the black market. If you want to check out the other things on the black market, make sure you check the pinned comment after the video… You’ll be shocked at some of the stuff on there.
Following this, the SD-6 Unit was also equipped with two grappling arms, rating to be able to pull other battle droids towards them, and especially organic beings, so that they could be crushed or blasted with high accuracy.
As for armor, the HULK droids were equipped with starship-grade duranium armor, which made it virtually immune to any blaster, or any weapon that a human could hold. as well as this, the Hulk unit also had telescopic-vision sensors, allowing them to see in a 360 degree pattern around them. This made it nearly impossible to sneak up and ambush one of these Hulk droids.
Now the really interesting part about these droids, is just like it’s predecessors, the SD-4 and SD-5 units, the HULK Battle droid was programmed using data that was illegally stolen from the Empire’s Dark Trooper Project.
Dark troopers, like the ones used by Moff Gideon were able to evaluate their surroundings, and decide when was the right time to strike, and when was the right time to pull back and defend. Unfortunately for the SD-6 HULK Units, they lacked a proper decision processor, which led to to act-very single mindedly, and in some cases could not stop their violent rampages, once they started.
The SD-6 battle droid was primarily used in armies as a highly effective, mobile turret, which could protect positions and laydown ridiculous amounts of cover fire. The HULK unit was most effective against small vehicles and large groups of organic and droid soldiers, but it also had no trouble pinpointing and executing a single enemy soldier on sight, if commanded to do so. Unfortunately, their massive size and large weapons array did have one downside. The droid was slowed down quite significantly on most planetary surfaces, making it vulnerable to small, tactical teams of highly skilled soldiers, like Clone Commandos.