SPARTAN-III program
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- "Make the units better with new technology. Make more of them. And make them cheaper."
- — Colonel James Ackerson[1]
The SPARTAN-III program was a top-secret project initiated by the Beta-5 Division of the Office of Naval Intelligence's Section Three in order to produce cheap and expendable supersoldiers to stem the tide of the Covenant's onslaught against the Outer Colonies.[1] In active combat service between 2536 and 2552, the SPARTAN-IIIs turned the tide of several critical battles of the Human-Covenant War. After the war, the remaining SPARTAN-III personnel were given the opportunity to join the newly formed Spartan Operations, supplementing the numbers of the SPARTAN-IVs.[2]
The SPARTAN-III project was both a successor and supplement to the SPARTAN-II program. Created and engineered by Colonel James Ackerson of the Office of Naval Intelligence, the SPARTAN-IIIs were to be the next generation of supersoldiers. Composed primarily of vengeful orphans from fallen colonies,[3] they would be cheaper to arm, train, and produce; being chosen from a wider pool of candidates, they would also be more numerous than their SPARTAN-II predecessors. They would rely more heavily on teamwork and sheer numbers than advanced technology and equipment to achieve effectiveness.[1]
Purpose
The SPARTAN-II program had been a dazzling success for the UNSC. Tales of Spartan supersoldiers fighting off thousands of Covenant attacks had become the stuff of legend. Unfortunately, there were too few SPARTAN-IIs to turn the tide of the war. Worse, the program's director, Dr. Catherine Halsey, had postponed the training of new SPARTAN-IIs for years due to the specific age selection criteria, despite having candidates who met the genetic requirements.[1]
The SPARTAN-II program also had several problems and deficiencies which overshadowed its success to the Office of Naval Intelligence. Firstly, the high mortality rate of the children during augmentation was counterproductive to the goal of the program. Next, funding the Spartans, including their training and Mjolnir armor, cost as much as a battle group, at least according to Rear Admiral Ned Rich.[1] Third, there were far too few of them for them to turn the tide of the war. Finally, even though the SPARTAN-II program was not formally revealed to the public until 2547,[4] the Spartans and their exploits had already attained a near-legendary status within the UNSC. Even though the Spartans provided huge morale boost to the UNSC, it was a problem for most of the Office of Naval Intelligence. ONI operated in secrecy, and anything that shone light on their operations was seen as detrimental to their efforts.
The SPARTAN-IIIs were designed to be cheap and expendable. Trained in companies of around 300 at a time with a training regimen tougher than that of the SPARTAN-II program,[3] they were ultimately sent on high-risk missions that the UNSC could not accomplish even with the elite Orbital Drop Shock Troopers.[5] Though the casualty rates of the SPARTAN-IIIs stood at 100 percent on some missions, to ONI, all the operations were strategic successes. They were trading lives for time against the larger and technologically superior Covenant. ONI hoped that in time, enough Spartans would survive to train progressively more future Spartans, swelling the ranks of available supersoldiers from only 30 SPARTAN-IIs in 2531 to roughly 100,000 SPARTAN-IIIs within two decades.[1] However, this ultimately never came to pass due to budgetary restrictions and the SPARTAN-III augmentations being compatible with only a small percentage of the population.[6]
