Not wanting to dedicate any of his capital ships to
reconnaissance missions, and willing to discard the Imperial
distrust of hyperdrive equipped fighters, Moff Doran commissioned
the TIE Scout class ships. Looking somewhat like a pair of TIE/ln
ships welded together, the TIE scout is an unwieldy vessel, not
particularly maneuverable, and not equipped with a very high end
hyperdrive. It does serve it's function, with hundreds of these
crafts crossing the Imperial borders every day, picking up
information on ship movements, clear hyperspace routes, and
monitoring local hyperspace and subspace communications.
Of course, many of the underarmed and underarmored ships are
destroyed, which is unfortunate, but of no great moment, as they
are cheap and expendable vehicles. In fact, the numbers of
destroyed ships, and the points at which they ceased transmission
are pieces of information that are almost as useful as those
brought back by successful flights, as they provide a rough measure
of the degree of fleet and defensive actions in the area.