United Nations Space Command

The United Nations Space Command (UNSC) is the military, exploratory, and scientific agency of the Unified Earth Government. The UNSC was formed in the 22nd century, a time when remnants of old cultural ideologies clashed for supremacy in the Sol System. The UNSC served mainly as overseer of United Nations military operations in space. After initiating massive militarization propaganda throughout its off-world colonies, through the UNSC, the UN defeated communist and fascist forces in a conflict generally known as the Interplanetary War, which consisted of several side-battles that took place on Mars, the Jovian Moons and the South American rainforests. Although the Interplanetary War brought a great deal of suffering to both the colonial population and the residents of Earth, it also united humanity's military forces into a common armed force by the end of the 22nd century.

Prior to the Covenant attack on Harvest in 2525, humanity was in chaos. Battles on multiple fronts and planets evolved from a group known as the Insurrectionists who wanted independence from the Unified Earth Government. The UNSC, more specifically, the UNSCDF, fought constant battles against the Insurrectionists in a loosely-defined civil war known as the Insurrection. In an attempt to help end the long running war against the rebels, the UEG commissioned the ORION Project (also known as SPARTAN-I project) and later the SPARTAN-II Program, which created elite super-soldiers to combat the separatists and the insurrections they spawned. When the Human-Covenant War began and the alien invaders began decimating the Outer Colonies, these Spartans became humanity's best hope against the technological superiority of the aliens. When the war began, the UNSC became humanity's greatest protector. This allowed the UNSC to override civilian rule and establish itself as humanity's primary government. Although the Unified Earth Government was more open to step down, the Colonial Administration Authority, the arm of the UEG ruling over the colonies, resisted the UNSC's rise to power, and was thus stripped of its power.

By 2552 A.D., Earth was the last remaining major human bastion; and fell under attack by the Covenant forces. The Human-Covenant War finally came to an end after a UNSC and Covenant separatists force eliminated the Covenant leadership and destroyed the Flood threat.

By the time the war began, humanity, and thus the UNSC, had reached Tier 3 of the Forerunner civilization achievement rank system. Humanity's rank continued to rise due to the capture of Covenant technology and equipment, which was studied and adapted for human needs. The very best and cutting edge of UNSC equipment was supplied to the SPARTAN-II project, and later less expensive but still cutting edge technology was given to the Spartan III's. One such example of innovative human technology is the energy shielding adapted and improved for use on the MJOLNIR armor.

Interplanetary War
The UNSC has its roots in World War I, which led to the creation of a League of Nations. The League of Nations led to the formation of the United Nations after World War II. The UNSC was actually formed and fashioned as the result of a series of brutal conflicts across the Solar System and humanity's space confines between 2160 and 2164, most prominently among them the Jovian Moons Campaign, the Rain Forest Wars, and a series of battles on Mars.

The United Nations Space Command, as organized and orchestrated as it seems, is actually an emergency military government formed in such strife. These encounters were centered around UN clashes with dissident political movements, the most important of which were the "Koslovics" and the "Frieden". More specifically, the Frieden movement was a fascist organization based on the Jovian Moons, though they received backing from some corporations operating in the United German Republic on Earth, while their ideological opponents, the Koslovics, formed a Marxist-Leninist group centered around the leadership of Vladimir Koslov.

The war began with an attack on United Nations colonial advisers on the moon of Io, one of the moons of Jupiter, but would spread to Mars and parts of South America in the Rain Forest Wars. These events culminated in a UN build-up in the mid to late 2160's, which would result in the UN establishing a unified military and a permanent Unified Earth Government as an ultimate power to lead the human race by 2170.

Colonization
The four-year long war put the spotlight on problems facing the overpopulated planet, and the Rain Forest Wars also exacerbated the problems relating to food distribution. The ensuing famine and societal problems related to the post-war population boom providing the spark to change the political nature of governance on Earth and elsewhere, leading to the political system seen in the 26th century.

These pressures also helped make space colonization seem more attractive in later centuries, as the Unified Earth Government would sign off on a colony ship program that was revealed in 2310 to ease the burden on the ailing home world. This would not have been possible without the invention of the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine in the late 2200s, which allowed the ships to travel far greater distances than ever before by means of allowing access to Slipstream space.

It took 52 years before the first colony ship, the Odyssey, was launched, and what became the so-called Inner Colonies were not fully colonized until the end of the 24th century. The apex of human colonization would come in 2492, when more then 800 worlds were inside UNSC territory and a handful of them were under development or had already developed into colonies. By this time, a ring of Outer Colonies was providing the UEG with the raw materials that made the macro-economy work; the political power, however, remained with the aforementioned Inner Colonies. The massive difference in wealth distribution and political power, which became a hallmark of humanity by this period, led to new threats of secession from the outer ring. Fearing the consequences of the breakup of the interstellar empire and seeing the benefits of avoiding all-out war to defend their hold on the colonies, the Earth government would embark on the SPARTAN-Is, the predecessors to the SPARTAN-II program in 2491, beginning with the ORION Project.

The Human-Covenant War
2525 marked the most important turning point in human history; it would mark the beginning of the great technological advancement, the unification of a divided and fractured human race, and the first contact of humanity and an extra-terrestrial intelligence, the Covenant. It would also see a majority of the Earth government's colony worlds destroyed, and billions of colonists and military personnel slaughtered by orbital plasma bombardment and planetary invasion, known as glassing. Thus began the Human-Covenant War with the First Battle of Harvest.

Stemming from the chance encounter of human and Covenant forces at Harvest, the first contact made between humanity and the Covenant involved the ship Minor Transgression, and was less peaceful than the second contact made between the two factions. A less aggressive meeting between representatives of the two factions took place on the fields of Harvest, but the peaceful meeting soon turned into a blood bath, with the Covenant claiming the planet for the numerous "Forerunner relics" present (unaware that the humans are the relics), slaughtering most of the colony's population.

On April 20, a scout ship, the CMA sent in a scout ship, the Argo, to investigate the cessation of communications between Harvest and the rest of the UEG's colonies. Before being destroyed by Covenant forces, it discovered that everything on the planet had been completely incinerated, and the surface covered by fields of magma, leaving nothing alive. Soon after, Battlegroup 4, consisting of the frigates CMA Arabia and Vostok and the destroyer CMA Heracles, were sent to investigate. On October 7, the battle group dropped out of Slipspace and to Harvest. In orbit around the remains of the colony world was a single alien ship which proceeded to attack the battle group, destroying all the ships except one. Intercepted communications identified the enemy as the Covenant, a caste-driven, theological organization made up of several alien species. The message "Your destruction is the will of the gods...and we are their instrument" was broadcast in perfect English.

Since the later Second Battle of Harvest in 2526, where a huge human fleet led by Vice Admiral Preston Cole barely won against a smaller Covenant fleet in a symbolic "victory" for humanity, the humans' grip on their territories declined significantly in the course of their struggle. The Covenant had managed to capture the majority, if not all of the Outer Colonies, and a portion of the Inner Colonies.

By this time, the UNSC overrode the UEG, and thus the central civilian authority throughout the human worlds and Earth itself. Although the central government was more willing to step down, the Colonial Administration Authority was far more reluctant to this idea, and thus the UNSC stripped it of most of its power. By the middle to late stages of the war, the government of humanity could be more accurately described as an "emergency military" government.

By 2552, the UNSC, outnumbered and outgunned, had managed to slow down the Covenant's inexorable progress through former human space, but the situation was dire. In desperation, HIGHCOM ordered a high-risk op, sending the SPARTAN-II super soldiers, the best soldiers ever fielded by humanity, to insert into Covenant space, capture a high-ranking Prophet, and return to UNSC space in an attempt to ransom for a truce. Before the operation began, the Covenant found and destroyed the planet Reach, killing most of the Spartans and a large portion of the UNSCDF, inadvertently stopping the operation and rendering most of the Spartans missing in action.

A single ship, the managed to escape the planet, with two Spartans on board, Linda-058, who was presumably dead in the Fall of Reach and the John-117. The ship followed coordinates derived by the AI Cortana to a ringworld known as Halo Installation 04. There John-117 destroyed a large Covenant fleet and the ringworld itself. He also encountered a parasitic lifeform known as the Flood, the species that the ring, Halo, had been built to starve. The major side-effect of the activation of the ring would lead to the extinction of all life within three radii of the galactic center. John-117 destroyed the ring, believing it to be too powerful, by detonation of the reactor of the Pillar of Autumn. After hijacking a Covenant flagship known as the Ascendant Justice, the SPARTAN reunited with the remaining survivors from Installation 04 and the destruction of Reach and attacked a force of Covenant ships in Operation: FIRST STRIKE, one of the most successful UNSC operations against the Covenant in the entire war.

By October of 2552, the Covenant had haphazardly discovered the position of the human home world, Earth, and sent a preliminary task force there, believing it to be the location of the Ark, an ancient Forerunner relic. They encountered staunch resistance, and were initially fended off. Further complications arose from the political and religious crisis that emerged in the wake of a UNSC operation to assassinate the Prophet of Regret, and the secession of the Sangheili from the hegemony, leading to the Great Schism, further throwing the Covenant into chaos. Nevertheless, by November, what was left of the Covenant had subjugated large parts of Africa, devastating much of the planet. Only their retreat through a Forerunner portal in Africa, and the arrival of the Sangheili fleet, stopped the utter destruction of the UNSC and Earth itself.

The UNSC and Covenant separatist forces launched a joint operation to destroy the Covenant loyalists once and for all at the Ark, stopping the installation from firing the Halos, killing the Covenant's last remaining leader, the Prophet of Truth, and destroying the bulk of the Covenant's remaining forces. On March 3, 2553, the Human-Covenant War officially ended in a victory for the UNSC and the Covenant separatists, but at a high price, with most major military outposts destroyed except for Earth. An estimated twenty-three billion human civilians were killed between 2525 and 2553.

Reconstruction
Since 2553, the UNSC has engaged in an extensive period of reconstruction in order to restore stability to the shattered remnants of human space. The UNSC has moved to reclaim those worlds that were not completely destroyed during the Human-Covenant War. By 2589, the former human stronghold of Reach had been restored and resettled by the UNSC. The UNSC also maintains its earlier truce with the members of the Covenant separatists. However, tensions remain as the UNSC must again deal with elements of the weakened Insurrectionist movement, with worlds like Venezia actively seeking to secede from the UNSC as recently as 2553.

Organization
The United Nations Space Command is subordinate to the Unified Earth Government. The professional, controlling body of the UNSC is the UNSC High Command (HIGHCOM), headed by the UNSC Security Council. Within HIGHCOM are a number of administrative commands, including PERSCOM, the Medical Corps, the Engineering Corps, Human Resources, and Astrophysics. Legal matters such as the issuing and enforcement of protocols are handled by the UNSC Judge Advocate General's Corps. Research designed to improve the UNSC's operations is carried out by the Internal Audit office.

Also under HIGHCOM's command is the UNSC Defense Force, which handles the defense of UEG colonies. Control is exercised through regional CENTCOMs, which have responsibility over certain areas of space. The Defense Force incorporates the UNSC Army, the UNSC Navy, the UNSC Air Force, and the UNSC Marine Corps. The Navy houses the Marine Corps (including the special forces branch of the UNSC Marines known as Orbital Drop Shock Troopers), the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), and the Fleet. The Army and Air Force maintain garrisons on colony worlds. When certain rebellious factions began to rise in the late 2510s, the UNSC was forced to police its protected colonies tirelessly to keep privateers and pirates from raiding the colonies and any UNSC ships.

The UNSC is also responsible for the overseeing and regulation of commerce throughout UEG space through the Department of Commercial Shipping. The UNSC also maintains the UNSC Symphony Orchestra and the UNSC Jazz Band as ceremonial musical units.

Public perception
The UNSC's pre-Covenant War and wartime policies were viewed with hostility by the civilian populace, especially within rebel movements. Starting with the implementation of the Cole Protocol and martial law, the UNSC's political takeover of the UEG and CMA branches and its generally authoritarian military policies championed over the course of the Human-Covenant War, the UNSC's public image has been stained by rebel and civilian allegations of fascism, totalitarianism and oppression.

These allegations are not completely baseless, considering most of this perceived UNSC-directed oppression lies with poor administration in the Outer Colonies, which has led to violent food riots perpetrated by proto-rebellious groups of dissatisfied colonial workers suffering from hunger and poverty at the hands of corporate planetary control.

Trivia

 * In reality, UNSC is an acronym for the United Nations Security Council. Additionally, the United Nations Space Command Marine Corps has an ostensible inspiration from the real world USMC, the United States Marine Corps.
 * The UNSC Defense Force is similar to that of the present-day United States Armed Forces, including its medical and science divisions.