Commando harness

This article is about the commando armor from Halo 3. Were you looking for the commando armor from Halo: Reach and Halo 4? The Commando harness is a harness worn by the Covenant's Commando Unit, a special operations formation of the Covenant military, subordinate to the Special Warfare Group.

Development and history
The Commando harness is a lighter and sturdier counterpart to the standard-issue combat harness. The helmet features hardened communication gear and up-link capabilities, and the thoracic cage is streamlined for greater maneuverability in close environments. Lightweight construction materials and advanced internal components increase overall performance making the wearer more deadly in combat.

Helmet characteristics

 * Unlock: Earn the Overkill achievement in any ranked free-for-all playlist.
 * Description: "Standard issue helmet for newly formed Commando Unit based on pre-contact ground forces pattern; upgrades include hardened communications gear and uplink capabilities."

It is similar to the Assault harness but is more smoothed and, unlike the Flight harness it is more rounded than angular. Unlike the Assault harness it features separate mandible guards. There is a small blue light on the forehead, one on the chin and one under each eye, which are also small blue lenses. The helmet also angles and slopes forward, giving the head a narrower appearance. The helmet also has a transparent neck guard with some aesthetic stripes down it's sides. This is the one of the rarest Sangheili helmets due to the high level of skill required to unlock it.

Shoulder pauldron characteristics

 * Unlock: Originally unlocked by earning the Steppin' Razor/Halo 3 Auto-Updates.
 * Description: "Distinctive deltoid protection calls to mind images of the heroes of the Second Illumination and their glorious successes throughout the Struggle for Ideological Purity."

The shoulder pauldrons for this armor model appear to be similar to the Combat harness model, but more smooth and curved.

Thoracic cage characteristics

 * Unlock: Earn the Triple Kill Achievement in any ranked free-for-all playlist.
 * Description: "Streamlined thoracic cage allows for greater maneuverability in close environments; lightweight construction materials and advanced internal components overall performance."

The thoracic cage has a line of separation in the center, with a small, silver, half oval-shaped block protruding in the center.

Trivia

 * The shoulder pauldrons were originally meant to be unlocked by earning the Killing Frenzy achievement. However, the unlock condition ID for the shoulder pauldrons was entered in the code as "_achievement_killing_frenzy", when the actual ID for the achievement was "_achievement_kill_frenzy". As a result, unlocking the Killing Frenzy achievement would not cause the pauldrons to unlock, because the pauldrons were keyed to unlock on a different, non-existent achievement.
 * Bungie could not fix this mistake through an update, because it would have required players to re-download every multiplayer map, and the main menu's map file, which would total at approximately 1.11GB in size. An update of this size would not have been allowed at the time, because updates were limited to 4MB at maximum. Instead, the shoulder pauldrons were made available to all players by default in a later update to the game.
 * In a Bungie Weekly Update posted by Luke Smith, the Steppin' Razor achievement was incorrectly identified as the achievement meant to unlock the pauldrons, when actually it was the Killing Frenzy achievement.

List of appearances

 * Halo 3