The many Star Wars films and spin-offs may largely feature a set of borderline-religious rebels struggling against the violent imperialism of evil empires, but everyone of all stripes tends to draw the mythical story's narratives into their own personal experience. But that's what makes Star Wars so great as a cultural phenomenon and storytelling exercise. Some evidence that all of the franchise's wisdom may have largely gone over the heads of many viewers comes in the form of a recent Twitter post by the official U.S. Army account revealing that a tank has been named after a character in The Mandalorian known affectionately as Baby Yoda.
Tank War
The post includes a shot of the M1 Abrams tank's enormous 120mm cannon. The tank in question was loaded up with its brethren on the way to Europe for an exercise called Defender Europe 20, which Task & Purpose describes as "the largest exercise of U.S.-based military forces to Europe since the end of the Cold War."
Delivering Happiness
The U.S. Army credits a Private First Class named Daniel Alkana with taking the picture, and Alkana is also credited on Popular Mechanics with pictures that reveal other tanks named Django (probably after Jamie Foxx's character in the Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained), Body Count, and Stallion.
Yoda When Young
Baby Yoda's real name in The Mandalorian is The Child. Of course, in previous iterations Yoda was the wisest (and probably oldest) Jedi in existence, having trained the likes of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker in the ways of The Force. Now, his likeness has been co-opted by the 3rd Division of Fort Stewart, Georgia, to be shipped to Bremerhaven, Germany, along with approximately 16,000 troops, 300 infantry fighting vehicles, and 299 other tanks.
Sources: Popular Mechanics, Twitter