Spartan

"Spartans never die."

- Kurt-051's last words.

The SPARTAN Programs are a series of UNSC projects designed to create physically, genetically, technologically, and mentally superior "supersoldiers" as a special fighting force within the UNSC Military.

Background
The basic concept for the SPARTAN program has been around since the late 22nd century when the first bioengineering protocols were developed for interplanetary war. Since the establishment of these protocols humans have been using performance enhancing equipment and augmentations to make them stronger and faster than previously thought. These super soldiers have been deployed numerous times throughout human conflict, leading up to and during the Human-Covenant War. The SPARTAN program first arose as a brilliant plan to enhance normal human soldiers into powerfully augmented special operations commandos. Initially the three separate programs were humanity's various attempts to create the perfect soldiers, in order to patrol the colonies, protect civilian and government populations, crush uprisings in their infancy and ensure others don't rise up as a result.

The SPARTAN soldiers of the UNSC are named after the ancient Spartans of Greece, specifically during the time of the Persian invasion led by Xerxes I. The wars between invading Persians and defending Greeks would be known as the Greco-Persian Wars, and lasted from 499-448 B.C.E.. During this war, the Battle of Thermopylae occurred, in which 300 Spartan soldiers leading 5000 other Greeks under the command of Leonidas I, held back a force of approximately 1 million Persian soldiers although, according to ancient sources, most historians today think that the Persian army was around 100,000 in size although this would still be an enormous force. All of the Spartans were eventually killed, but they successfully killed 20,000 Persians (according to Herodotus), and bought the Greeks time to prepare a better defense for Greece. The Spartans' formidable resilience resulted from their rigorous training in the agoge, which started when they reached the age of 8.

Origin
The SPARTAN program begun in 2321 with the activation of the ORION project. Launched by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the project was named after the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. The aim of ORION was to build on bioengineering protocols established in 2164 and create stronger and better soldiers than any before them. The initial beginnings of ORION were merely a test to see what could be accomplished with the advancements of that time, and candidates of the ORION project were all volunteers from the armed forces of the military - these handful of candidates went through numerous testing and augmentations throughout the duration of the project. However, the results were far less than expected and eventually the candidates were seeded into the regular chain of command after the project was declared ineffective and terminated.

The Relaunch of ORION (the SPARTAN-I Program)
In 2491 the Colonial Military Administration relaunched ORION in secrecy, with the new goal of learning from the mistakes of the previous attempt, and creating a soldier unlike anything seen before - and to deploy these soldiers behind enemy lines and quell insurgencies in their infancy, or destroy established insurgencies by destroying their chain of command and expanding outward. The project was headquartered in one of the many orbital docks on the fortress world Reach, and the candidates were, once again, selected volunteers from all Special Force branches of the military. This iteration of the project used more advanced indoctrination and biological augmentation techniques, and after a grueling series of physical and mental tests, the first batch of soldiers, 165 in total, successfully passed and moved on to the next phase. In 2496 the UNSC launched Operation: CHARLEMAGNE in response to the Secessionist Union who executed a series of attacks on Eridanus II, which resulted in numerous deaths and the kidnappings of civilian and government officials in 2494. This marked the first operational deployment of the ORION soldiers, now codenamed SPARTAN-Is, who scored a decisive victory and emerged from the battle with only a single casualty. The Spartans were able to complete the mission without even being seen, thereby fueling a range of conspiracy theories and media speculation, this proved to be very helpful to ONI's propaganda efforts in the coming decades. Though the Spartans were effective, their abilities fell short of the scientists' hopes, and they cost far too much to develop and field - in 2506 the project was deactivated and the soldiers were reassigned to various special operation units.

The SPARTAN-II Program
In the years following the deactivation of the SPARTAN Project in 2506, the Insurrection became too large for the UNSC to manage with small Special Forces teams. As the Insurrectionist attacks were becoming more effective, and the military's responses heavier; the need for large scale military campaigns were becoming more and more necessary. The SPARTAN-II project was conceived by Dr. Catherine Halsey of ONI's Section 3, as the successor to the original ORION project and the best possible solution to end the conflict with the Insurrectionists. In 2517 the project begins; where the former SPARTANs were chemically-enhanced volunteers from the armed forces, the SPARTAN-IIs were young children, literally kidnapped from their homes, who were indoctrinated and raised as soldiers from as young as six years old, being cybernetically and surgically enhanced once they reach physical maturity. Although it is viewed as wildly unethical and filled with controversy, the secretive program produces results, and more importantly the SPARTAN-II soldiers proved to be the most effective soldiers ever fielded by a Human armed force - and the most powerful weapon in the battle against the Insurrection. However, in 2525 the sudden breakout of the Human-Covenant War proves to be the most challenging and daunting war yet waged by Humans, and the SPARTAN-IIs are outfitted with the most advanced mechanized armor in Human history. While the war with the Covenant Empire continued to progress and the Insurrection was effectively cut off, the SPARTAN-IIs continued to engage Insurrectionist factions who remained strong enough to pose a genuine threat to the UNSC. The SPARTAN-IIs continued to perform their missions near-flawlessly, and ruthlessly killed off rebel leaders while engaging Covenant forces, doing whatever was necessary to protect the interests of the UNSC.

The SPARTAN-III Program
As the Human-Covenant War progressed and casualties mounted exponentially, ONI activated another program that was arguably even more morally questionable than the SPARTAN-II program. Spearheaded by a prominent opponent to Halsey's SPARTAN-II program, Colonel James Ackerson establishes the SPARTAN-III Program using the previous program as a proof of concept. Designed to produce supersoldiers more quickly, at a lower cost, and with a lower life expectancy, the SPARTAN-III program is intended for extreme high risk operations conducted at the highest level of secrecy. The SPARTAN-III candidates are once again children, however rather than actually stealing children from their beds, this time the "candidates" are children in their pre- or early teens, recruited from orphanages after the loss of their homes and families from the Covenant invasion, given the opportunity to strike back at the Covenant. The S-III candidates are taken to the planet Onyx and are under the leadership of SPARTAN-II Lieutenant Commander Kurt "Ambrose". Throughout the Human-Covenant War, three companies of SPARTAN-IIIs are trained, deployed and killed. The first company of S-IIIs, Alpha Company, is successful in destroying Covenant and Rebel forces during the battles of Mamore, New Constantinople and in the Bonanza Asteroid Belt - their last mission Operation: PROMETHEUS in 2537 is deemed a success, even though all of the Spartans of Alpha Company are killed in action. The second company, Beta, is trained soon after the loss of Alpha, their first mission Operation: TORPEDO in 2545 is also deemed a success, however only two Spartans, Tom-B292 and Lucy-B091, survive out of the three hundred soldiers that take part in the operation. Tom and Lucy become trainers for the third company of S-IIIs, Gamma Company. The third company of SPARTAN-IIIs complete their augmentation and many are deployed on missions elsewhere during the final years of the war, when the Shield World on Onyx was activated. Smaller, highly specialized units consisting of SPARTAN-IIIs also existed - the Headhunters and Noble Team, the latter so close in effectiveness to SPARTAN-IIs that they recieved SPARTAN-II-grade MJOLNIR armor and had a SPARTAN-II as a permanent member. Several teams of Gamma Company survived the Battle of Onyx and are currently trapped in the Shield World with the other remaining SPARTAN-II survivors except for John-117.

ORION Project
The ORION project or the SPARTAN-I program was first phase of the SPARTAN program. Initiated in 2491, as an element of the ORION project. The original Spartan project was created to test genetic enhancements on volunteers from the armed forces. Despite a high mortality rate, the ORION project was successful enough to eventually warrant a SPARTAN-II program.

SPARTAN-II Program
The SPARTAN-II Program was the continuing effort to produce super-soldiers and would be highlighted by being the first in the series to mix an Advanced Powered Exoskeleton System with the subjects' superior physiques. The SPARTAN-IIs were heavily engaged in the Human-Covenant War. Since the end of the Human-Covenant War, survivors of this group include SPARTAN-058, SPARTAN-087, and SPARTAN-104 in the Micro Dyson Sphere in Onyx and SPARTAN-117 trapped in deep space. The SPARTAN-II Program's official symbol is an eagle posed with its talons forward, ready to strike holding a lightning bolt in its left talon and arrows in its right.

SPARTAN-III Program
Outfitted and engineered by James Ackerson and the Office of Naval Intelligence, the SPARTAN-III program was the next generation of Spartan super soldiers, perfecting and rectifying all that the SPARTAN-II program could not. While they are inferior to the SPARTAN-IIs in terms of general strength, speed, etc, they were designed to be more numerous, better trained, cheaper, and expendable.

Trivia

 * In order to preserve morale during the Human-Covenant War, the UNSC promoted the belief that Spartans could not be killed, hence why all deceased Spartans are listed either as Missing in Action or Wounded in Action.