Compared with the Fourth Civilization's retrenched development, the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy was still engulfed in war.
On September 24, 21 BBY, the Galactic Republic's main fleet launched a counteroffensive. After annihilating half of the Confederacy of Independent Systems' remaining fleet strength during the Battle of the Delon system, they immediately assembled a massive fleet for a counterattack.
By then, virtually no Confederacy of Independent Systems fleet remained capable of stopping the Republic Army's advance. On the very day the counteroffensive began, the Galactic Republic fleet launched a landing operation on Mimban.
The Second Battle of Mimban erupted!
For this landing operation, the Galactic Republic committed 300,000 troops! Of those, 280,000 were conscripted natural-born soldiers.
To transport such an enormous force, the Galactic Republic brought every transport vessel the military could muster, including Consular-class cruisers, AA-9 transports, and anything else capable of carrying personnel.
The Confederacy of Independent Systems had long deployed hundreds of thousands of robots across several key regions of the planet. Their programming ordered them to hold their positions, so rather than blindly charging out to engage the Republic army, which possessed superior firepower, armored units, and air support, they remained behind cover and held their ground.
The robots' sole purpose was to buy time. Naturally, if they could kill more Republic soldiers in the process, so much the better.
This battle also marked the Galactic Republic's first large-scale proactive deployment of natural-born soldiers in an offensive campaign, but the results greatly disappointed Republic Army commanders.
When facing the Separatist robot legion, these natural-born soldiers performed extremely passively. The robots' fearless, cold-blooded assaults frightened them and even crushed their morale. There was even an incident where more than 500 soldiers attacked a firing position defended by just over 100 robots, only to collapse into rout