TIE cycling rack

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The TIE cycling rack, officially known as the Imperial SFS cycling rack and simply as a TIE hangar rack was a modular starfighter storage and launching device manufactured by Sienar Fleet Systems for the Imperial Starfighter Corps. It was designed to retrieve, store, service and launch TIE series starfighters, usually TIE/ln space superiority starfighters, from Imperial hangars to discourage independent landing capabilities and training and teach Imperial pilots to rely on higher authority.

The TIE cycling rack was a starship launching device designed by Sienar Fleet Systems and used by the Galactic Empire's Imperial Starfighter Corps to store and launch TIE series starfighters. The rack's main component was a transfer guide suspended from the hangar ceiling on scaffolding. Retaining claws built into rails in the transfer guide grabbed and held onto the TIE stored in the rack and moved it around as required, negating the use of the ship's ion engines while inside its mothership. The cycling rack was a modular, adjustable design, allowing Imperial engineers to expand and reconfigure the racks to hold up to 72 TIE series starfighters at any given time.^[1]

The first stage of the rack's standard configuration was the boarding rack, where Imperial Starfighter Pilots entered their ships through a boarding platform which connected to the TIE's open access hatch through a ladder. Pilots could reach their ships' platform through overhead catwalks^[1] which connected the rack with ready rooms and other hangar facilities.^[2] After the pilot entered and activated their ship,^[3] the transfer guide advanced the TIE to the front position, where the retaining claw disengaged the fighter, either launching it directly into space, or within the hangar itself; in the latter case, tractor beams would be used to guide the TIE through the hangar's magnetic field and into space instead.^[1]

After a TIE returned to the ship, tractor beams would again be used to guide it to another hangar and to waiting receiver-carriers, which moved the TIE to a debarkation station where pilots exited their craft. The TIEs were then moved via the carriers to service and maintenance areas where they were repaired and refueled by astromech droids, before being attached to the receiving end of the transfer guide and cycled back to the system, ready for their next mission.^[1]

History

Imperial Era

An Imperial Pilot entering a TIE Fighter to enforce the skies during the Aldhani Dam Heist

In the early years of the Galactic Empire's reign, the Imperial Navy commissioned Raith Sienar to design and produce an inexpensive new starfighter for the Imperial Starfighter Corps, resulting in the TIE/ln. The prototype was initially to be exclusively spaceborne, but Sienar proposed a different design with slightly more reinforced wings which could also operate within planetary atmospheres. This second design was approved, but Imperial officials were confused by its lack of landing gear, a standard feature in all vessels meant to eventually land. Sienar then presented them with the design of the TIE cycling rack, which would completely negate the need for any landing equipment, drastically reducing the starfighter's weight and increasing its maneuverability.^[1]

Soon, cycling racks became the standard in all Imperial hangar facilities, including inside Star Destroyers and planetary garrison airbases. The rack's modular design allowed it to be expanded or reduced in size,^[1] with some facilities storing as few as three TIEs at a time,^[3] and as many as hundreds.^[4]