- "Spartans never die...I wish that was so."
- — Dr. Halsey
The SPARTAN-III Program was a United Nations Space Command Office of Naval Intelligence program to construct supersoldiers.
Introduction
The SPARTAN-III Program was the successor of the highly successful SPARTAN-II program. Engineered by Colonel James Ackerson of the Office of Naval Intelligence, the SPARTAN-III commandos were to be the next generation of Spartan super soldiers, cheaper, less selective and more numerous than their SPARTAN-II predecessors, but nearly as effective in their own way, if lacking the experience and heavy equipment of the surviving Spartan-II's.
To aid him, Ackerson conscripted Spartan-II Kurt-051 to provide the field expertise to train the Spartans. Additionally, senior naval non-commissioned officer and former Spartan-II trainer Senior Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez was brought in to help train the new generation of Spartans. Instead of being trained on Reach, due to the extreme need for secrecy, they were trained at Camp Currahee on Onyx. Onyx is a planet on the very edge of UNSC controlled space.
Instead of MJOLNIR Armor, the Spartan-IIIs use the cheaper SPI Armor. While this means they are far less protected and capable in extreme firefights, it is also one of the major reasons why the Spartan-III program has been successful in turning out so many candidates so quickly.
Purpose of Project SPARTAN-III
The SPARTAN-II program had been a dazzling success for the UNSC. Tales of Spartans fighting and beating the Covenant had become the stuff of legend. Unfortunately, there were too few Spartan-II's to turn the tide of the war. Worse, the program's director, Dr. Catherine Halsey, had postponed the training of new Spartan-IIs for a few years due to extremely specific requirements for the physical state of children to be conscripted.
Spartan-II had several problems. First, the high mortality rate of the children during augmentation was counterproductive. Second, funding the Spartan program, plus their MJOLNIR Armor and training cost as much as a battle group. Third, there were far too few of them. Fourth, the Spartan-II program had gone public for morale. The publicity made many in ONI unhappy.
Spartan-III's were designed to be better trained, cheaper, and expendable. They would be trained in companies of 300 at a time, then sent on impossible suicide missions the UNSC could not accomplish with a legion of troops. Though the death rates of Spartan-III's stood at 100 percent on some missions, to ONI, they were trading lives for time, against the larger and superior Covenant. ONI hoped that in time, enough Spartans would survive to train more and more future Spartans, swelling the ranks of available Spartans from only thirty Spartan-II's in 2531 to a hundred thousand Spartan-III's within ten years. Unlike the Spartan-II's, composed of abducted children trained at Reach, the Spartan-III's were composed of orphans and sent to Onyx, a classified and restricted world in UNSC space. That way, their exploits were to be permanently under the radar of the public eye.
Spartan-III Candidates
Unlike Spartan-II, the Spartan-III children were not conscripted from their homes. The companies of Spartan-III's consisted of children orphaned on worlds that had been glassed by the Covenant. From places such as Jericho VII, Harvest, and Biko, there were an abundance of children available to the program, and virtually every one of them volunteered to take revenge on the Covenant.
This created many behavior issues. Unlike Spartan-II, the Spartan-III children were violent and aggressive. Often times they would just as soon be at each other's throats as they would work as a team. This, coupled with illegal drugs injected into the Spartans during their Spartan augmentations, made the Spartan-III's sometimes as vicious and unstoppable as the Brute warriors they faced in combat.
Augmentation Procedures
The Spartan-IIIs underwent bio-enhancement procedures similar to those of the Spartan-IIs, the procedures were referred to as Project CHRYSANTHEMUM. With advances in technology, however, the survival rate for Spartan-III candidates was usually 100%, as opposed to the 44% survival rate of the Spartan-IIs. The Spartan-IIIs were injected with the following augmentation drugs:
- Drug 8942-LQ99: A carbide ceramic ossification catalyst to make skeletons virtually unbreakable.
- Drug 88005-MX77: A fibroid muscular protein complex that boosted muscle density and strength.
- Drug 88947-OP24: A retina-inversion stabilizer drug. It boosted color and night vision capabilities.
- Drug 87556-UD61: Improved colloidal neural disunification solution, which in turn decreases reaction time.
In addition, the following drugs were injected into the Spartans of Gamma Company. They were illegal, but Kurt-051 felt that they were necessary for the Spartans to survive.
- Drug 009762-OO: a mutagen that alters key regions of the subject's frontal lobe. Enhances aggression, strength, endurance, and tolerance to injury. Negative effects include a loss in rational thinking and tactics. This is counter-balanced by the antipsychotic and bipolar-integration drugs.
- Drug 009927-DG: miso-olanzapine. an antipsychotic. Counters the mutagen's properties.
- Drug 009127-PX: cyclodexione-4. a bipolar-integration drug. Counters the mutagen's properties.
Timeline of the Spartan-III program
On December 27, 2531, the first group of Spartan-III's, Alpha Company, was sent to Onyx to be trained. Starting with 497 "recruits" the group was whittled down to 300. Every Spartan survived the Augmentations. They were activated in November of 2536. Their record was first exemplary, they saw action at the insurrection of Mamore, The Battle of New Constantinople, and the Bonanza Asteroid Belt. Nine months after they went active, however, they were massacred in Operation: PROMETHEUS in 2537.
Beta Company was approved right after Operation: PROMETHEUS in 2537. 418 candidates were selected in 2539, but only 300 became Spartans. Kurt-051 was disheartened at the loss of his first Spartans, and trained this group in unit cohesiveness, and more intense regimens. Though they were even better trained than the previous Spartans, they were similarly massacred in Operation: TORPEDO in 2545.
Gamma Company was trained with the help of the only two surviving Spartan-III's from Beta company, Spartan-B292 and Spartan-B091. 330 candidates were selected, and at the request of Kurt, all 330 were approved. Every one of them survived the training and augmentations. Frustrated with the deaths of his previous two classes of Spartans, Kurt-051 added illegal drugs to their augmentation procedures. In addition, they were injected with drugs that artificially induced puberty, with human-growth hormone and other body supplements. These Spartans received deployment orders only a few weeks after The Battle of Reach, many left Onyx before The Battle of Onyx, it is unknown where they presently are. Only fifteen were left on Onyx when the Battle of Onyx began, of them, seven were killed in action, and eight escaped to Shield World.
Delta Company was proposed, and Camp Currahee was being prepared for their arrival when The Battle of Onyx occured in 2552. With the death of Spartan-051 and the disappearance of SCPO Mendez and Dr. Catherine Halsey, as well as the immediate concerns of The Second Battle of Earth, it is unlikely that Delta Company will ever be trained.
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