This is the "Rebel cannon sled", a piece of production design that attempted to maximize value by building it on a real vehicle. In this case, an AKTIV snow trac sled.
The blueprints for it call out the snow trac base as well as its use of an 'existing cannon unit.'
It does show up in the finished film, if you know where to look for it.
As the hangar bay screen shot shows, it made it to both location shooting in Norway and on stage photography at Elstree. It was small enough to transport, I suppose.
You may occasionally find photos of Luke in his snowspeeder pilot manning the guns online labeled as a 'deleted scene'. It's not. It's more like a photo opportunity, as this prop / vehicle was on set that day.
* pilot outfit, that is.
Never been able to confirm what model of Aktiv vehicle is under there, but this is a strong contender:
Between the Shining and Empire Strikes Back, 79-80 was a busy year for Aktiv production vehicles.
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Oh wow, we're on Rogue One. I think I coined Delta-class even though there was an extant Delta, because its triangle shape just made that irresistible. But I figure each of the abecederian shuttles has a series number that helps further differentiate
Also, I got to use "abecederian" in the accompanying guide, and I love that word.
Moisture vaporators are such an iconic design that they've moved off desert planets. One rationale is that groundwater is contaminated enough, naturally or otherwise, that condensed air-captured water is preferable.
The REPUBLIC GALACTICA is dead. Ruthless
trader barons, driven by greed and the
lust for power, have replaced enlightenment
with oppression, and "rule by the people"
with the FIRST GALACTIC EMPIRE.
Until the tragic Holy Rebellion of "06",
the respected JEDI BENDU OF ASHLA were the
most powerful warriors in the Universe.
For a hundred thousand years, generations
of Jedi Bendu knights learned the ways of
the mysterious FORCE OF OTHERS, and acted
as the guardians of peace and justice in
the REPUBLIC. Now these legendary warriors
are all but extinct.
Those were two separate discoveries. The 'Lucasfilm is making more movies' came first, in the summer of 2012. Then 'George is selling the company' in the fall.
(Though the change in leadership in June made it easy to guess that production was in the future. You don't hire a producer to just re-release older content)
The enormity of the Star Wars timeline is one of those things that shines a light on the artifice of storytelling, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but you start to question how specific notions of canon can be and realize why it's better to treat it all as myth or narrative.
If you wanted to get super granular and try to define things as specific as, say, accents in stories, such specificity falls apart when you stretch that level of scrutiny across a vast timeline....
Like, really, if you did a story set 4,000 years before A New Hope, would they really be speaking recognizable [Basic]English? No, so then you concede that the whole thing's been translated for your benefit as a viewer, and that brings in the artifice of storytelling.
In the original animatic of this shot, these were not explosive trails coming off a destroyed Banking Clan frigate, but rather a volley of missiles deliberately fired by the ship. I like how the DK guide description attributed the shot to a SPHA-T walker in a Venator hangar.
This is the clone pilot with the Boba Fett chest sigil on his helmet.
This shot of Luke's X-wing from Empire (left) is at the 36 minute mark, just a minute off where it is reused in Return of the Jedi (right) at 37 minutes. The recycling of this footage spared Red 5 from being, presumably, forgotten at Cloud City. It was almost a different X-wing.
This scene was originally going to showcase the larger size X-wing built by ILM. Sculpting a Galaxy talks about it how it was designed with an articulated Luke in the cockpit. Its head movement was meant to match Luke's action of putting on his glove over his damaged hand.
This large X-wing has made it to museum tours even though it never ended up on screen. Though it has Luke in the cockpit and R2-D2 in the droid socket, its wing has three stripes, not five. So maybe a late editorial change kept Red 5 in the mix for future stories.