Панели по бокам - радиаторы, вынужденное решение ( + текст, англ.)
TIE-series starships have enormously powerful reactors for their size, as demonstrated by the fighters' potent firepower and dynamic handling in dogfights. Since reactor power is disproportionately great for the size of the craft, the removal and dissipation of waste heat becomes a problem of fundamental importance. TIE engine design makes this particularly problematic, because the outlet nozzles are narrow. Thermal energy from inside the engine is only able to exit through an effective aperture of less than a hundredth of a square metre per engine.
The solution is to add two or more heat panels to the sides of the ship, and to pump the reactors' waste heat into radiator wings. An effective radiator requires a large surface area, but making the wings too extensive would interfere with the pilot's view. The wing configuration of each TIE design, with a given total reactor power, is a compromise between these opposing considerations. Darker surfaces make more effective radiators, hence the predominant charcoal-black tone. For a given wing shape, the effective surface area can be increased by introducing a fine grille texture or some other pattern of lumps or ridges. Even if we ignore the contribution of corrugation, radiators held at only a few hundred degrees (much less than the several thousand degrees of the incandescent engine interiors) may increase the effectiveness of heat removal by thousands of times.
The more powerful the craft, the greater the total wing area should be, assuming that radiator technology remains constant and that the same panel texture is always used. This is the case for designs newer than Lord Vader's TIE. Ships such as the TIE Avenger, Defender and Scimitar appear to follow the wing-area/power rule-of-thumb. However there seems to be a distinction between the flat-wing and bent-wing designs. The flat-winged TIE fighters tend to have greater wing areas for their power; much greater than an Interceptor or Vader's long-range craft. Bent-wing configurations may give a fundamentally better radiator quality, perhaps through some kind of improved heat circulation. Alternatively, there may be no technological advantage, and the high-power small-wing designs may be expected to suffer more obscure technical drawbacks. They may be more fragile or difficult to maintain.
