The TIE Reconnaissance Fighter was a stealth variant of the TIE Series starfighter. The prototype served with Galactic Alliance forces, the pilots of which nicknamed the starship "the Blur," during the Second Galactic Civil War in 40 ABY.
The TIE Reconnaissance Fighter was a cutting-edge craft developed a generation after the Galactic Civil War, the closest rival that Sienar Fleet Systems had produced to the Incom Corporation StealthX.
In spite of this, its basic design remained similar to the much earlier bomber, shuttle and boarding craft variants of the TIE, with two cylindrical hulls placed side-by-side between its wings. As with the previous designs, the starboard fuselage contained the cockpit.
The major innovations lay in the left-hand hull. In previous twin-fuselage TIE designs, this been a munitions bay or passenger nacelle, but on the TIE Reconnaissance Fighter, it housed a number of advanced systems intended to improve the fighter's combat and infiltration performance. There was a hyperdrive, a navigation computer, a deflector shield generator, and a full life support system, which had not been standard on most earlier TIEs, plus sophisticated stealth countermeasures.
The fighter may not have been quite as advanced as the StealthX, however. At least one prototype had just a plain black finish on the hull, rather than the hologram-like camouflage which made the Jedi infiltrator appear as no more than a ripple in the starfield.
Nevertheless, the fighter retained the traditional speed and maneuverability of the TIE lineage.
A prototype TIE Reconnaissance Fighter was assigned to the Star Destroyer Anakin Solo, the command ship of the Sith Lord Darth Caedus. During the feigned negotiations before the ambush by Centerpoint, it was assigned to an officer named Captain Olavey, to test it under field conditions.
Caedus, believing his daughter Allana to be under threat from the Jedi Order, took over the fighter and used it to ferry the youngling away from the Star Destroyer—only to find himself ambushed by Red Sword Flight, an assassination squad of Jedi flying StealthX fighters.
The capabilities of the new fighter and its Sith pilot were not enough to prevent the Jedi scoring several hits. Grand Master Luke Skywalker quickly had the TIE in his sights for a deadly shot, but he refused to fire when he detected Allana's presence aboard the TIE, and this brief hesitation allowed more Alliance fighters to come up in support of the TIE Reconnaissance.
- The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia