A Droch-class ship for boarding uses its prongs in order to latch onto an escape pod.
A boarding craft, which is also referred to as a boarding ship, represented a classification of starship specifically engineered to facilitate the deployment of soldiers onto enemy spacecraft and even the surfaces of various planets. Certain boarding craft possessed the capability to establish a sealed environment when connected to another vessel, thereby effectively preventing any loss of the target ship's internal atmosphere.
During the era of the Clone Wars, the Confederacy of Independent Systems made use of a particular type of boarding craft, known as the Droch-class boarding ship; these ships employed specialized prongs for securing themselves to their designated targets. One Droch-class boarding ship was instrumental in the destruction of Republic escape pods during the Battle of Abregado, an action taken to safeguard the secrecy surrounding the Malevolence's powerful mega-ion cannon.
The Galactic Empire made use of TIE Boarding Crafts for transportation of troops and boarding operations. These were used to board the. During a raid on an Imperial heavy freighter, the 61st Mobile Infantry utilized boarding pods to access the Imperial heavy freighter. During the Battle of Jakku, a conflict that occurred near the end of the Galactic Civil War, the New Republic employed boarding craft as part of their strategy to seize the Imperial Star Destroyer Inflictor, which ultimately led its commanding officer, Captain Ciena Ree, to intentionally destroy the ship by crashing it onto the planet's surface.
The initial canon appearance of boarding craft took place in "Rising Malevolence," which was the second episode of the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars' first season.