UNSC Army Rangers

UNSC Army Rangers
Affiliation:	Unified Earth Government
Branch:	UNSC Army
Type:	Infantry
Role:	Long-range scouts

The UNSC Army Rangers are an elite cadre of infantry among the UNSC Army serving as long-range scouts and counter-insurgency specialists.

Roles and operations

UNSC Army Rangers traditionally serve as long-range scouts, deploying sniper teams to observe the enemy and place sensors behind enemy lines to provide intelligence to allied forces, overall aiding the efforts of the United Nations Space Command. Rangers also specialize in long-term counterinsurgency operations and organizing resistance groups on occupied worlds, a role that became their primary duty during the Human-Covenant War.

The Rangers work closely with Spartan Operations to defend human settlements from local criminal elements, pirate or mercenary raiders, and often rely on their knowledge of the terrain when conducting deep strikes into enemy staging areas. Prior to the establishment of Spartans, the highly advanced Delta-6 Division exclusively recruited from Rangers, being deployed by the Office of Naval Intelligence on assignments well outside the capacity of conventional warfighters.

History

During the Human-Covenant War, the Rangers were tasked with supporting resistance groups on Covenant-occupied colonies. One such example came during the defense of Concord in December 2551, in which Rangers worked alongside the Concordian militia to secure a victory against the Covenant fleet in orbit and pave the way for the ultimate human victory on the ground. However, this task was made difficult by the Covenant's ruthless and indiscriminate attacks, particularly due to the Covenant's reluctance to take and hold ground when it could simply glass targets from orbit. Nevertheless, Ranger sniper and guerrilla teams ensured Covenant armies were dealt heavy casualties during their occupation.

Following the Covenant War, the Rangers have transitioned back to their traditional duties, serving to aid the broader efforts of the United Nations Space Command. In the conflicts following the war, Rangers continue to defend colonies from raiders and criminal elements. Their war-era experience has continued to aid them - and those Rangers who were later inducted into the SPARTAN-IV program such as Sigrid Eklund - into the era of the Created uprising.

Production notes

UNSC Army Rangers are likely based on United States Army Rangers, airborne special operations troops trained for direct action, national and international emergency crisis response, airfield seizure, airborne and air assault operations, special reconnaissance, intelligence and counter intelligence, combat search and rescue, personnel recovery and hostage rescue, joint special operations, and counter terrorism. It is likely that UNSC Rangers are also airborne units.

Concept art of UNSC Army Rangers was created for Halo: Reach by Isaac Hannaford, though Rangers never explicitly appear in the game.

In Halo: Official Spartan Field Manual, an image (shown below) from the Halo: Reach level Tip of the Spear is used to depict Army Rangers on their associated page. It is unclear if this means that the Army personnel encountered in the aforementioned mission are in fact Ranger personnel.

Gallery

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  Concept art of UNSC Army Rangers.

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  Additional Ranger concept art.

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  Concept exploration of Noble Team, depicting them in a UNSC shipyard alongside Army Rangers.

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  An image utilized in Halo: Official Spartan Field Manual for the Army Rangers, depicting UNSC personnel and SPARTAN-B312 in combat with a Sangheili Ultra.

List of appearances

• Halo: Official Spartan Field Manual (First mentioned)
• Halo Infinite
  • Season 02: Lone Wolves (Mentioned only)
• Halo: Winter Contention