The SPARTAN-III program was the successor of the SPARTAN-II supersoldier program. Engineered by Colonel James Ackerson of the Office of Naval Intelligence, SPARTAN-III was to be the next generation of Spartan supersoldiers, stronger, better, and more numerous.
To aid him, Ackerson conscripted Spartan-II Kurt-051 to provide the field expertise to train the Spartans. Additionally, senior naval 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, they were trained at the secret Camp Currahee on Onyx.
Instead of MJOLNIR Armor, the Spartan-IIIs use the cheaper SPI Armor.
Purpose of project SPARTAN-III
The SPARTAN-II program had been a dazzling sucess 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 indefinately postponed the training of new Spartan-IIs due to Spartan-II's high requirements for the physical state of children to be conscripted.
Spartan-II had several errors in it. 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 fleet of UNSC ships. Third, there were far too few of them. Fourth, the Spartan-II porgram 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 more superior Covenant. ONI hoped that in time, enough Spartans would survive to train more and more future Spartans, swelling the ranks of avaliable Spartans from only thirty Spartan-II's in 2531 to a hundred thousand Spartan-III's within ten years. Unlike the Spartan-II's, trained at Reach, the Spartan-III's were sent to Onyx, a classified and restricted world in UNSC space. That way, their exploits were to be permenantly 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 avalable 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 viscous and unstoppable as the Brute warriors they faced in combat.
History of Spartan-III
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On December 27, 2531, the first group of Spartan-III's, Alpha Company, was sent to Onyx to be trained. of the 497 Spartans, only 300 survived after 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 apprived right after Operation: PROMETHEUS in 2537. 375 candidates were selected in 2539, but only 300 became 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. Many left Onyx before The Battle of Onyx, it is unknown where they presently are.
Delta Company was proposed, and Camp Currahee was being prepared for their arrival when The Battle of Onyx occured in 2552.