Headhunters (Team)

For the short story, see Headhunters (Short Story).

"As tools of war, the SPARTAN-IIIs were most often deployed as living fire-and-forget weapons--just point, shoot, and wait for the fireworks. ONI, or on occasion, a highly placed UNSC official, passed along a key Covenant target; the IIIs were then sent in, headfirst, to eliminate the given objective, or inflict as much damage as physically possible in the effort... Success meant a handful or more made it back to base, mission complete; failure, nobody came home."

— Headhunter description.

Headhunters are Spartan-III Special Operations squad. Only Spartan-IIIs that had survived two or more specially assigned training missions would be evaluated. Once an overall list of potential candidates was compiled, each soldier's personal files and mission reports were analyzed against a set series of parameters calculated by top ONI specialists. Once selected, candidates were separated from their fellow Spartans and shipped to a special training facility on the far side of Onyx. After three months, the soldiers were broken into four two-person squads, chosen through a series of detailed evaluations and an intense interview process meant to devise the best possible pairings between members of the group. For the next two years the Headhunters would go through seven months of supervised field exercises, followed by six months' real-world wartime insertions. These Spartan III's would go onto missions far behind enemy lines and would more than likely be expected to die in combat. Two Headhunter teams participated in a failed mission on an unnamed Covenant moon, with notable members including Jonah and Roland.

Known Headhunters

• Jonah
• Roland

Trivia

• The concept of the Headhunters is quite similar to that of the Spartan II group, Gray Team. Both groups are separated from their fellow Spartans to undergo special training and then are sent far behind enemy lines for special covert operations.
• There are a total of 8 Headhunters, 4 are known to be KIA.