The Battle of Hoth

If you get the chance listen to the great 1980s era NPR radio broadcast version of TESB. It sets the tone & why the RA used Hoth as a base. That location was meant to be a short term headquarters & place to regroup until they could gear up, find a better place to run missions from. By the NPR broadcast, novel & film script the Rebels were only on Hoth a few months. Not years. Hoth was a lot like Crait in The Last Jedi(2017).
From what I recall too from Canon Star Wars(Disney era) sources, the huge Ion Cannon was run, staffed by hard core Rebels from Alderaan who served in a elite unit. They swore to man the Ion Cannon & not retreat.

TFM

--- Double Post Merged, Aug 27, 2019, Original Post Date: Aug 27, 2019 ---

To me the core of the RA were humans, Corcusant political leaders who were able to rally & organize the alien races, systems who could do more, offer weapons, fleets, tactics, aid, etc. Mainly the Mon Calamari . By the films(canon) Mon Marta is first explained as "Supreme Commander" in ROTJ(1983). This helped established the RA as a larger group(army) not just small unorganized cells.

 

I'm going to assume you're talking about Mon Mothma, though it was funny as I did actually Google Mon Marta to see if we were talking about some new canon character I wasn't up to speed on. I don't think we can draw too many conclusions from her title other than the fact that she's technically the top of the Alliance chain of command. Like most titles it's a little grandiose and somewhat misleading. Rogue One shows her not having that much control over what's going on. From the very beginning in which she needs to make contact with a breakaway faction of the RA, the way Draven completely undermines her and makes it an assassination mission, to being powerless to stop the seeming dissolution of the RA followed by rogue elements heading to Scarif without orders... she's not really running much. And that's pretty much keeping with the EU (both old and new) in which she is sometimes almost an antagonist with her bureaucracy while people are having to constantly sneak around behind her back and undermine her just to keep the Alliance or Republic alive. Not always though, and they are always sure to point out that she's a necessary and vital pain in the butt. She seems to be something more of a big picture/policy leader, providing the political support/experience than actually running the day to day operations of an army at war. She does make broad stroke strategy decisions I'm sure but it would appear from the OT that her Admirals/Generals have quite a bit of autonomy since the situation was always commanded by somebody other than Mon Mothma and they were making decisions that affected the future of the Alliance. At Endor even Lando is making decisions you would think would be up to a Supreme Commander, gambling the Alliance fleet on his faith that his buddy will get the shield down.

Does all this mean that they're a disorganized bunch of splinter cells? No, though this has been explored in some EU, I just mean to say that I don't think Mon Mothma's title can tell us all that much about how the Alliance operates because it doesn't even really accurately describe how she operates. I wasn't trying to say that's what they were though, I was saying they were a small band of freedom fighters in comparison to the Empire and as a result their tactics were more considered than simply throwing all their forces against the other guy's forces and seeing who can break the most ships. From what we've seen the Alliance chain of command is pretty cloudy and not always functioning the way it's probably supposed to but I don't really think I'd call them a disorganized collection of splinter cells. But for security and tactical purposes you would think they'd be somewhat splintered, which is probably one reason why the organization and size of the RA is not always clear. I never said they weren't an army though.