The One Oh Third Task Force was a specialized unit operating within the structure of the Imperial Navy, answering to the authority of the seasoned Admiral Durril. Its primary vessel was the Imperial I-class Star Destroyer known as the Judicator, supported by a number of smaller ships, notably including Arquitens-class light cruisers.
During the [Imperial Era](/article/imperial_era], specifically in 2 BBY, the One Oh Third participated in an operation to seize Scrim Island on the world of Batonn from a group of rebels. This was part of a larger campaign to establish control over the Batonn sector. However, the offensive was unsuccessful because Durril was outmaneuvered by his adversaries, and much of the task force was rendered immobile by enemy ion weapons.
Although the Imperial vessels were able to retreat from the engagement, Durril's request for a follow-up attempt was rejected by his superior officer. The One Oh Third was then dispatched to the Marleyvane shipyards for repairs. Instead, Admiral Thrawn, a rival of Durril, was given the responsibility of securing the island, and he later triumphed over the remaining Batonn insurgents with the help of TIE fighters provided by the One Oh Third.
The One Oh Third Task Force of the Imperial Navy was composed of eight capital warships, with the Imperial I-class Star Destroyer Judicator serving as its command ship. Accompanying the Star Destroyer were two corvettes acting as screens, two frigates, and three light cruisers, with at least two being Arquitens-class light cruisers. The unit also had a minimum of three TIE fighter groups stationed on the Judicator, whose pilots were considered highly skilled.
During the Imperial Era, Admiral Durril led the One Oh Third Task Force of the Galactic Empire. In 2 BBY, he, along with Chiss Admiral Thrawn of the 96th Task Force and Admiral Kinshara of the One Twenty-Fifth task force, was summoned to the planet Coruscant by Fleet Admiral Jok Donassius. The purpose was to address a growing danger posed by several allied insurgent groups in the Batonn sector of the Outer Rim.
Thrawn was initially assigned to attack the planet Batonn, the central hub of rebel operations in the region. His objective was Scrim Island, a fortified location holding approximately one hundred captives that had been seized by insurgents five days before the meeting. Thrawn, concerned about the three ion cannons and energy shield protecting the facility, was quickly challenged by Durril. Durril dismissed Thrawn's plan for an aerial breach, favoring a low-altitude assault using assault boats filled with stormtroopers.
Thrawn considered this alternative, but he believed that the island's coastal defenses could repel such an attack and requested additional time to further evaluate the situation. However, Donassius denied this request and ordered immediate action, including the destruction of the island. Thrawn refused this option due to the presence of prisoners, leading Donassius to reassign the attack on Scrim Island to Durril and the One Oh Third Task Force. Thrawn's Ninety-Sixth Task Force was then tasked with attacking the world of Sammun.
Following the meeting, Durril and his task force departed for Batonn. However, Thrawn and his assistant, Eli Vanto, secretly traveled to the planet aboard a stolen smuggler's transport to observe the battle from a safe distance, confident that the One Oh Third would fail. In orbit above Batonn, Durril, commanding from the Star Destroyer Judicator, positioned his task force in a siege formation. This formation was notably unconventional due to the absence of a starfighter screen and the unusually large distance between two of the light cruisers and the Judicator.
There was also no initial response from the insurgents, leading Thrawn to suggest they might be negotiating. The freighter carrying the Chiss admiral was briefly scanned by one of Durril's screening corvettes, but the transponder identified the ship as a properly licensed freighter, allowing it to proceed.
After the scan, the first shot was fired, followed by a full barrage from the Judicator's turbolasers. However, the island's energy shield withstood the attack. The second and third salvos were then launched, now from the entire One Oh Third Task Force, despite the lack of response from the enemy. Still unable to penetrate the shield, the commanding admiral moved his screening corvettes closer to the Star Destroyer, allowing him to demonstrate the full firepower of the task force.
Despite the attack, Durril initially concentrated all his firepower on the center of the island's shield, failing to notice the contraction of the shield's edges on the western and southern coasts. This briefly exposed some of the insurgents' ion cannons, allowing them to fire two shots that directly struck the Judicator, disabling it. Although Durril then ordered his light cruisers and frigates to target the cannons on the northern and western shorelines, the shield had already recovered the ion cannons after their attack, rendering the orbital bombardment ineffective.
Some of the support ships then resumed firing at the center of the shield in an attempt to overload it, while others continued to target the now-protected ion cannons as Durril worked to restore his systems. The northern shoreline was then exposed by the shield, but Durril again failed to notice, with his ships firing ineffectively at the western and southern shoreline emplacements. This allowed the insurgents to fire another ion shot, heavily damaging the Judicator's portside escorts: a frigate and two light cruisers. Despite the damage to the escorts' sensors and turbolasers, which forced them to rely on secondary weapons and auxiliary engines, Durril maintained his ineffective attack pattern. Instead of repositioning his ships, the admiral continued to bombard the latest site of ion fire, allowing another salvo to completely immobilize the same group of escorts.
However, during this attack, a group of seven insurgent craft carrying ordnance managed to escape the shield and head towards the main continent. They used the chaos above, minimal cloud cover, and the reflected sunlight glare to remain undetected, except by Thrawn. An eighth insurgent ship also escaped the island, this time into space, but it was later pursued by Thrawn's craft after he transmitted an emergency distress signal on Durril's behalf and dispatched the Ninety-Sixth Task Force's cruiser Shyrack to monitor the other seven ships.
As the enemy ships escaped, the shield shifted again, allowing three turbolaser salvos from the western shoreline to strike the Judicator's starboard superstructure, burning through its metal armor. Durril's four undamaged escort craft eventually reacted to this attack, targeting the western area of the island, but they were too slow to exploit the returning shield, failing to notice or capitalize on the continued tactic.
Soon after, the shield shifted again, briefly exposing the eastern shore. However, as the escort ships targeted the unprotected ion cannon, there was no attack from the insurgents, as the base's commander changed their tactics to open up the west ion cannon, unnoticed by the preoccupied Imperials. The Judicator's escort ships were still firing at the protected eastern shoreline when their weapons were disabled by the west ion cannon. With the Imperials no longer able to effectively attack, the Judicator again became the focus of the insurgents' turbolaser attacks, with the ion cannons preventing the escorts from assisting.
Once Thrawn departed Batonn to pursue the fleeing insurgent craft, the Shyrack, acting on his earlier orders, moved into the battle and coordinated the One Oh Third's remaining functional craft. They used their combined tractor beams to move the immobilized Judicator out of range of Scrim Island's weapons. The Star Destroyer then regained power and retreated from Batonn. Upon Thrawn's return to the planet, the One Oh Third Task Force had been reassembled.
Later, in a holographic conference between the various leaders operating in the sector, Admiral Durril reported his failure—highlighted by the successes of the Ninety-Sixth and One Twenty-Fifth forces—to Fleet Admiral Donassius. He insisted that he could take the island with another attack in thirty hours. However, Donassius denied the request and ordered Durril to take his task force to the Marleyvane shipyards in five hours for repairs, while Thrawn would be responsible for a second attack.
Thrawn later successfully captured Scrim Island and shifted his Ninety-Sixth Task Force's attention to securing the rest of Batonn. In preparation, Thrawn borrowed the One Oh Third's TIE fighters and concealed three squadrons of them in repair barges attached to his light cruisers Flensor, Tumnor, and Shyrack, which had been damaged in the admiral's own assault on Skrim. The three ships were positioned at the corners of an equilateral triangle, approximately 100 kilometers per side, presenting them as vulnerable and far from the Chimaera, Thrawn's own Star Destroyer and the focal point of any space battle.
When the enemy arrived with three attack squadrons consisting of thirty ships, they maneuvered around the light cruisers, believing them to be deterrents from them opening fire. Just as the enemy vessels were about to attack the Chimaera, Thrawn ordered the barges to detach, revealing the TIE fighters and allowing them to flank the insurgents, catching them off guard. They then easily destroyed the attacking enemy vessels, assisted by the Chimaera's turbolasers. After additional ground combat, Batonn was cleared of insurgents.
Admiral Durril, a long-serving military official who was self-assured, hostile, and prejudiced, even towards other officers, commanded the One Oh Third Task Force. Admiral Thrawn believed that Durril prioritized speed over precision, sometimes leading to errors. This was confirmed after the One Oh Third's failed attack on Scrim Island, where Durril failed to recognize patterns in the enemy's attacks.
The One Oh Third Task Force was first introduced in Timothy Zahn's 2017 novel, Thrawn, the first book in Star Wars: The Imperial Trilogy. It was first depicted in the fifth issue of the Marvel comic series Star Wars: Thrawn, an adaptation of the book written by Jody Houser, illustrated by Luke Ross, and released on June 13, 2018.