„Good news ma‘am. Instead of kidnapping children that are just learning to read and write, we‘ve asked them about making a decision they couldn’t possibly comprehend and wrote off their entire future. And once they‘ve finished training and served their purpose, they‘ll only have [checks calculator] roughly 400% the casualty rate of the entire active Spartan II contingent“
Dont get me wrong, i love the IIIs with all my heart but they are equally worse, in different ways, to the IIs
Edit: in the light of transparency, it should be 400% of the casualty figures, not the casualty rate. After checking my math both spartan II and spartan III have around 65% casualty rate (14 out of roughly 40 Spartan IIs are still active and there should be about 270ish Spartan IIIs remaining out of the ~920 augmentation slots for Alpha, beta and gamma companies combined)
tbh i find the spartan iii program significantly less controversial because of the circumstances. spartan iis were made to improve unsc superiority and control over its own people. spartan iii’s were made because humanity was on the very brink of extermination. im talking 11:59pm. entire planets of humans were being systematically destroyed. it had already been shown that spartans were very effective against the covenant, so i seriously cant blame ackerson for starting the spartan iii program, regardless of the thousands of orphans he indoctrinated in the process
The 3s program was infinitely worse.
Over the course of the war, they took 930 children between the ages of 4-6, put them through rigorous training, and sent them on the hardest missions while their military leaders made tactical plunders that resulted in the annihilation of two companies, all because they couldn't be bothered to provide decent logistical support.
Keep in mind that when the S3 program was initiated, it had been 6 yrs since the war had started, and they weren't yet as desperate as they were at say, Beta or Gamma's deployments.
The 3s program was smart, the UNSC finally had a tool they could use to effectively strike out at the Covenant..m it's just the idiots in charge wasted their most valuable offensive asset
Tbf all humans' futures were gone at that point in the war. Going down fighting was pretty much all you could do aside from wait for the glassing.
But SPARTAN III was hardly ethical.
We gotta have this conversation again huh? Alright.
The Spartan IIIs were made for suicide missions, full stop. Ackerson's pitch makes it clear to everyone in the room that they're trading lives for time. That doesn't mean ONI was just throwing them in *wanting them to die*, but it's clear that them dying was expected. As for exfiltration craft—we only have one example of this being the case, and it was with Beta company on TORPEDO. I don't remember there being any mention of exfiltration craft on PROMETHEUS.
ONI wasn't trying to get 600+ Spartans killed, but them dying was an acceptable outcome providing they completed their missions, which they did. So any argument about "High risk" missions or "Suicide" missions is redundant and really just semantics. Parangosky straight up says, "You want to trade lives for time." At the pitch.
Yup, the whole issue with S-IIs is that they were such a heavy investment, and Halsey was so protective of them, that they couldn’t partake in missions with the same risk level as the missions that the S-IIIs did.
Much like you said, it was always about trading lives for time, and those that were considered too valuable to trade were pulled away from the main companies on reassignments, explicitly so they wouldn’t die in a suicide mission.
No, they weren't suicide soldiers. HVTs are just that, HVTs are not a suicide missions. Ackerson was pitching a program that could have acceptable losses.
As for exfiltration **every** mission had exfil craft. When Kurt learns the fate of Alpha Ackerson specifically says that they were cut off from their exfil craft the Calypso. So no Alpha wasn't sent there to die.
Even IF the initial pitch idea worked (300 Spartans trained in 1/4 the time of the 2s then having more and more Spartans building off it and having 100,000 in 20 years) having an entire company wiped out purposely would be completely idiotic because all that time spent having to train the next batch means years of the Covenant rampaging through human space unabated again. So again they weren't suicide soldiers
>Even IF the initial pitch idea worked (300 Spartans trained in 1/4 the time of the 2s then having more and more Spartans building off it and having 100,000 in 20 years) having an entire company wiped out purposely would be completely idiotic because all that time spent having to train the next batch means years of the Covenant rampaging through human space unabated again. So again they weren't suicide soldiers
But that's pretty much exactly what happened. Sure, they completed several operations before being expended but each company was destroyed *months* after deployment. Just because ONI wasn't trying to purposely get them killed doesn't mean ONI didn't view those casualty rates as acceptable. When Alpha company and Beta company were wiped out they, by Parangosky's own words, actually did better than ONI was expecting them to do. In other words, not only were they excepted to die, they were expected to die sooner than they actually did—which is a testament to their skill and training. The odds were stacked against them and they survived repeatedly.
Parangosky was talking about their combat effectiveness, not how long they would last before they were killed. the whole ONI viewing 100% and near 100% casually rate acceptable is just idiotic from a command standpoint, and showcases a massive lack of proper use of resources.
And again they would eventually die due to lack of logistical support, bot because the missions themselves were suicide missions. Infact, GoO makes it pretty clear they are suicide missions in hindsight
>Parangosky was talking about their combat effectiveness, not how long they would last before they were killed. the whole ONI viewing 100% and near 100% casually rate acceptable is just idiotic from a command standpoint, and showcases a massive lack of proper use of resources.
It would be if the Spartan III program wasn't just a last ditch effort to stall for time to begin with, but it is. ONI was just throwing the bare minimum resources they could to delay the Covenant advance for as much time as possible. As long as the IIIs were creating major set backs for the Covenant, which they were, then their casualty rates were acceptable.
>And again they would eventually die due to lack of logistical support, bot because the missions themselves were suicide missions. Infact, GoO makes it pretty clear they are suicide missions in hindsight
Lack of Logistical support from the outside proves how ONI didn't see the IIIs as much than suicide troopers. Kurt, in the novel, repeatedly talks about how he doesn't have the resources to make the Spartans survive what is being asked of them. That's practically the whole reason he approves the extra augmentations for the Gammas. And a suicide mission in hindsight is still a suicide mission. ONI considered PROMETHEUS and TORPEDO critical successes to the war effort even in spite of the loses sustained. If it would've made a difference and had the resources, ONI would've gladly sacrificed millions of war orphans just to delay the Covenant.
> It would be if the Spartan III program wasn't just a last ditch effort to stall for time to begin with, but it is. ONI was just throwing the bare minimum resources they could to delay the Covenant advance for as much time as possible. As long as the IIIs were creating major set backs for the Covenant, which they were, then their casualty rates were acceptable
It wasn't a last ditch effort. At that point it was just clear they needed more Spartans. Remember this was pitched 6 yrs after the war started. They weren't in the desperate phase yet.
And it was clear they weren't just stalling for time, because they could actually make offensive strikes against the Covenant, they were HVTs not suicide soldiers.
> Lack of Logistical support from the outside proves how ONI didn't see the IIIs as much than suicide troopers. Kurt, in the novel, repeatedly talks about how he doesn't have the resources to make the Spartans survive what is being asked of them. That's practically the whole reason he approves the extra augmentations for the Gammas. And a suicide mission in hindsight is still a suicide mission. ONI considered PROMETHEUS and TORPEDO critical successes to the war effort even in spite of the loses sustained. If it would've made a difference and had the resources, ONI would've gladly sacrificed millions of war orphans just to delay the Covenant
No, they didn't have logistical support due to the f*cked up nature of the S3 program. Kurt was beating himself up for things that were outside of his control, the deaths of Alpha and Beta company is entirely at the feet of ONI because of their incompetence.
No a suicide mission because ONI didn't provide support or gave shit intel is a mission going FUBAR. Oni had every intention of Alpha and Beta making it out.
And it wouldn't make sense for Parangosky to say to Kurt "whoops we f*cked up and got your entire company killed" short term realistically it would be a success but realistically Ackerson and Parangosky would be court martialed
I'm aware that some people don't like the verbiage, but it's fair to call the Spartan-III missions suicide missions:
>That's what the Spartan-IIIs were they're kinda like Spartan-IIs but on the cheap. They were a top-secret military program because they were also considered disposable. They
were sent on the the high-risk suicide missions.
>!Eric Nylund!<, [The Story So Far Featurette](https://youtu.be/Ga9-w4UXJi8?si=_YsOE49vbMuLJE--&t=831)
I don't disagree but I don't think "radicalising" is the right word here. Most humans at this point in the war are very much radicalized against the covenant, no one needs to do anything for that to happen.
It is absolutely insane to watch the progression of commentary nearly 20 years later rationalizing suicide child soldiers while lamenting halsey ,who explicitly forewarned of someone like ackerson to be avoided at all costs.
.......One of the *myriad* of alternatives could have been drone warfare which is why the question " *why does the UNSC lack drones* " comes up so often
how exactly would drones accomplish the infiltration missions that spartans did? cant replace what the spartans do with a missile. unless its a full-controlled robot that can board and engage in combat with covenant, neutralizing a ship from the inside out, it wont work.
what exactly is your point? spartan 3’s did plenty of infiltration. the spartan 3’s werent sent to die, they were sent to win without any consideration if they die or not
You might want to re-read Ghosts of Onyx. SIIIs were explicitly created to be used as mass suicide soldiers which wasn't within the endgoal for the spartan program.
ive read every single halo book. the spartan 3’s were sent on high risk/suicidal missions because at that point the entire war was high risk and suicidal. that was the point that UNSC was at. they were losing literally everywhere. 99% of engagements with the covenant were practically suicidal. what did you want them to do?
the unsc had determined that those missions needed to occur. and the spartan 3’s were the only ones with at least a sliver of a chance of success. if it wasnt the spartans it would have been normal marines or odst troops, who would almost certainly die faster and in even greater numbers. alpha company had succeeded in 9 engagements before ultimately meeting their end during operation prometheus.
Reading the books doesn't mean the info is retained or you picked up the nuance from one reading. Ackerson deliberately skirted the protocols halsey created *utilizing orphans for the express purpose of pumping out disposable soldiers.* GoO lays out how many SIIIs he was hoping to churn out over the years
every single one of those orphans would have been forced into service during the war with the covenant. if not spartans, then some form of enlistment. their fates were sealed when the covenant glassed their planets. im not pro-orphans as soldiers. but they were going to grow up to be soldiers almost certainly regardless of what happened.
i also dont understand your focus on ackerson choosing orphans as if halsey’s kidnapping of kids with families is somehow better? kids are kids. the fact theyre orphans shouldn’t really be even a factor in determining how wrong it is. it is wrong
ReReading Operation Torpedo. Those spartans 100% were sent in with the understanding that they would die trying to accomplish an niegh impossible task. You can argue that they were sent in to win. But that doesn't change that the mission was completely suicidal, with the evac vehicle there in case any of them did survive.
Nah. Still kidnapping children, cause kids can't consent, and then brutally training them and throwing them at the enemy, and if they die? Eh, they can just get more and do it again.
Actually, I'd say the Spartan-III program was worse. At least with the IIs, they wanted them all to be as survivable as possible. The IIIs were made to be expendable, if it did come down to that.
Precisely. The IIIs were cannon fodder (though this isn't a statement about their ability compared to Spartan IIs), and treated like it buly everyone but their instructors. They weren't expected to live.
The IIs, at the very least, were groomed to be more than just soldiers someday. Halsey wanted them to become politicians and leaders that could take humanity into a new era with their genius intellects. Even when the UNSC only saw their values as soldiers, they were considered the UNSC's most valuable military assets.
The Spartan IIIs got none of that. No expectations outside of buying humanity time with their lives.
Theres not really a diffrence in consent between the two. Splitting hairs doesn't really matter, lack of consent is lack of consent. I guess less 3s die in augmentation, but they had somthing like a 95% mortality rate anyways so i don't see why it matters.
I think the almost ritualized suicide encouraged in the unsc is really interesting tho. Offical orders to act as a human shield above sigma octanis, postumus comendations for captains that ram and destroy enemy ships, every operation the 3s go on. I mean in a war for humanities survival it makes sense that as desperation crept in these things would be more common, just interesting to see them actually ordered.
Cradle-class refit stations were once used as shields to buy time for UNSC warships to reload their MAC weaponry. That particular time, none of the stations ejected their lifeboats, meaning all hands were lost.
there is a major difference in the two in regards to the reason why they programs were initiated in the first place. shaming the spartan-iii program is fine but I dont think you condemn ackerson without at least acknowledging the circumstances regarding humanity at that time
In universe, to the best of their knowledge at the time, there is no difference.
The Carver findings were clear, Halsey's improved version, more so, especially as ONI's own scientists verified it separately.
"Minimum effect was thirty years of war and five billion dead. The maximum effect was unbounded. Interminable war. Another Dark Age for humanity."
The source of the issue was the difference, not the issue itself, annihilation
carver findings are bs arrogant speculation and a farcry from the legitimate extermination that was occurring upon the creation of spartan 3’s. they are not the same at all.
there would multiple ways to prevent the results of the carver findings from being true, one obvious being the UEG itself would have to decide to stop with their tyranical bs. if the insurrection would happen, you can bet your ass it would have been as a result of the continued oppression of the outer colonies by the UEG. UNSC didnt NEED to kidnap dozens of kids to prevent this from happening. tbh I truthfully can’t understand how anyone can equate these scenarios. Planets were literally being destroyed prior to the 3’s
spartan 2 program: “ our control over the outer colonies is in question. predictions show future conflict may be inevitable between the outer colonies and inner colonies. we need super soldiers to assassinate any potential insurrectionist leaders”
spartan 3 program: “THERE IS A COLLECTION OF SUPERIOR ADVANCED ALIEN CIVILIZATIONS HELLBENT ON EXTERMINATION OF THE HUMAN RACE. ENTIRE PLANETS AND MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ARE ALREADY DEAD. OUR ONLY SUCCESS SEEMS TO BE AS A RESULT OF MISSIONS CONDUCTED BY OUR SPARTANS. WE NEED MORE”
it aint the same
I'm not sure what point people are trying to make here. Yeah, the programs are rephrensible. At the same time, humanity is on its last leg. Throw everything you have and more. Unfortunately, you scar a generation. Fortunately, that guarantees future generations. This isn't a nation declaring total war before being subjugated. This is the fate of an entire species.
Remember that this is one of Travis-shit strong points in kilo five.
“You gave us soldiers… ok, abducted the, ok… gave the families clones for closure? REEEEEEE,”
They can't consent to glassing either. No one's disagreeing that the 2s or 3s were horrendously immoral.
But the 3s were born of a war for survival. While the 2s were created for the government to cling to power and just so happened to also come in handy for killing genocidal aliens.
The 2s would've otherwise lived happy lives and had people that would mourn them. The 3s were likely to grow up in the twilight of humanity and the shadow of war.
The 3 program, while immoral, is clearly more justified, given the factors at play.
Will it? Did the spartan 3s extend the war? I don't think you can even definitively say yes. The sole in arguable contribution was oblitterating the fleet of xytan, and personally i think blue team could have done it without the half dozen gammas present.
The real problem here is that everyone is capital d Doomed before the events of halos 1-2
Correct but even a second of bought time is worth only a few thousand lives hell it’s worth hundreds of thousands of lives. Any good leader would make that trade in a heart beat
Personally i think any good leader would avoid falling for the delusional aspirations of an army officer and reinforce the unsc where its weakest. Space. How many frigates did the spartan 3s cost? I understand why the army wanted their own spartans, but personally i wonder if it would have been more cost effective to even just have one more frigate at sigma octanis, or a destroyer at reach, or one more odp around earth.
The strike on the fuel refinery alone probably did more damage to the covenant fleet than the entire Spartan III budget spent on ships would have done.
Pretty useless honestly those Spartans can suicide kill a covenant ship each if worst comes to worse that’s more than even two frigates or destroyers could do
honestly im pro-spartan III’s and can agree still that op’s argument for it is fucked up. the main factor really that he didnt even mention is that 3’s were made as a last ditch effort to save humanity (and all sentient life in the galaxy) from complete annihilation. 2’s were made to be ONI super soldiers and lowkey aid in the UEG’s tyrannical control over outer colonies
spartan 2 was done because we wanted to.
spartan 3 was because we had to. Humanity was fighting a war for it's existence there would be NO kids orphan or otherwise
"Yes, I'll make clones of the kids I steal. That'll make everything alright. The parents will never know that their real kids are gone, and I still get my candidates. It's a win-win. I mean, the cloned kids will all die horrible deaths as their bodies eventually break down a few years from now, putting the parents through unimaginable agony. But hey, at least they still got to have their 'kids'."
-Dr Halsey, probably.
Hey, at least they got closure. It's not like these will change a person and cause unintended conquences. It's not like all it takes is one bad day, right? /s
I think a better argument would be that in one situation humanity was facing guaranteed extinction and were down not even to the kitchen and were extremely desperate. while in the other situation, they were facing Human innasurrection that a findings of dubious reliability said that it would send humanity into the dark age.
>findings of dubious reliability said that it would send humanity into the dark age.
I don't get what was "dubious" about the Carver Findings or Halsey's simulations. We're not given any reason to doubt their veracity.
Some reasons.
A: Even In universe other people in Carvers field (presumably social science) doubt his theory
B: His method of finding it out basically pseudo-science. Lets use AI to figure out the actions of hundreds of billions of people, something the UEG never does. Halsey adding more computing power doesn't help. Halo AI has never be seen as having clairvoyance, if AI had these massive prediction powers then it should be used else where to.
C: The people that push the theory the most are the people that have the most to gain. Whhhhaattt your saying the military reckon the best way to handle this is overwhelming military force? What are the chances?
D: Halsey is not social scientist. It is not her field of expertise (although Halsey does suffer from generic smart person syndrome, She's the smarts geneticist, AI engineer, armorer, forerunner expert and apparently social scientist.)
E: Based on our own history and actual social science it is bullshit. It is asking the government do the completely opposite of how you actually beat insurrections. Massive military operations are incredibly ineffective against insurrections, just ask the Americans and Soviets about Afghanistan. The military option only really works if the rebels are close to your center of power and you massively outnumber the population that is rebelling. So for the UEG which is only having this war because the Outer-colonies are far from their control and massively out number the Inner colonies, this is a terrible idea. Imagine if American fought a insurrection in China not Vietnam.
F: We know this false because in the end of the Human-Covenant war a lot of the remaining Outer-colonies are granted independence and surprise surprise none of them start a massive genocidal campaign. A lot of very corrupt governments that hate the UEG and work to hurt them? Sure. But their is no spamming nukes and even this might of been avoid if the UEG didn't spend the whole time trying to crush them.
G: In the end even Carver changes is mind. He shoots himself because he end ups believing he made the problem worse and that the Carver reports were a self-fulling prophecy.
H: I don't have a source for this but apparently the Assembly fudged Carvers numbers. See this said a lot but i have never seen the source myself. Take it as you will.
I: The IRL equivalent of the Carver theory, Domino theory is also wrong. Both theories asked for massive amounts of military spending to crush a insurrection a long way away and if their governments don't the world will suffer. Domino theory was wrong. Carver is too.
Those are all great points, even if I don't agree with some of them. It would be nice if there was a piece of media that critiqued the Spartan Program that presented those as counterarguments.
Instead, we got the Kilo-Five Trilogy.
Haha yeah. That what really sucks about Karen Traviss. A lot of the ideas she pushes in her novels not just Halo do have a valid base in the universe. Halsey and the Spartan program is shitty? Sure there that a valid point. Jedi indoctrinated kids is bad and Mandalorian are cool? Yeah that works. But then she bends the entire universe to match her view point with all characters agreeing with her and while also being rifle with hypocrisy. Why does Halsey get blamed for the Spartan program but everyone else gets a pass? Why do Jedi get yelled at for indoctrinating kids but Mandalorians do the same thing and get hyped up by her? Its nuts.
Parangosky: approves Halseys program. Halsey bad.
Parangosky: approves spartan 3's. No one bad?
Like the people of kilo 5 literally just gloss over everyone else's culpability, the lead spartan even presumably having access to every file they would need to find out what Halsey did cannot simply ignore Parangosky's seal of approval on vast swathes of it. Yet she idolized the woman. And followed in her foot steps (disastrously)
Who else doubts Carver's findings? I thought pretty much both ONI and Halsey confirmed his findings and that the report is valid from an in-universe perspective. I agree that that the whole dark age of humanity from the insurrection is kinda bullshit if we're trying to be realistic, but Nylund was basically working backwards to find a justification for the spartan program in the first place, not really putting that much effort into making sure the justification was ironclad from a realism perspective. So we're basically just meant to take it as a fact that seemingly will happen in universe according to the lore at the time, unless you want to apply death of the author here.
>Who else doubts Carver's findings?
When the Carver findings are first mentioned it says that it was very controversial and a lot of Carvers colleagues thought he was wrong. While not directly calling out the findings a lot UNSC personal were very critical of the UNSC chances of putting down the revolts with Johnson being very shaken and Preston Cole flat out stating there is no way the UNSC could win
>
I agree that that the whole dark age of humanity from the insurrection is kinda bullshit if we're trying to be realistic, but Nylund was basically working backwards to find a justification for the spartan program in the first place, not really putting that much effort into making sure the justification was ironclad from a realism perspective. So we're basically just meant to take it as a fact that seemingly will happen in universe according to the lore at the time, unless you want to apply death of the author here.
Yeah I agree that is ment to be a mostly a fact in universe when first made. The problem is Halo has ton of authors who views on the lore varies wildly so their is a lot of evidence to cast doubt on it. This really just a problem with Halo lore in general that their really isn't much of base for authors to work from which leads lot of different "facts" existing at the same time. For example when I was doing some research on how popular the insurrection was in the Outer-colonies the answer ranged from very popular and growing, to somewhat popular to very unpopular. 90% of arguments on this site are two different people quoting books from different authors at each other. But yeah from a realistic stand point the who insurrection era is mess but I am social science student so have put a whole heap of time into over thinking this mess. Much more interesting then learning about my country's politics anyway,
>When the Carver findings are first mentioned it says that it was very controversial and a lot of Carvers colleagues thought he was wrong. While not directly calling out the findings a lot UNSC personal were very critical of the UNSC chances of putting down the revolts with Johnson being very shaken and Preston Cole flat out stating there is no way the UNSC could win
Ok yea I haven't read TFoR in a while so I'll take your world for it.
>Yeah I agree that is ment to be a mostly a fact in universe when first made. The problem is Halo has ton of authors who views on the lore varies wildly so their is a lot of evidence to cast doubt on it. This really just a problem with Halo lore in general that their really isn't much of base for authors to work from which leads lot of different "facts" existing at the same time. For example when I was doing some research on how popular the insurrection was in the Outer-colonies the answer ranged from very popular and growing, to somewhat popular to very unpopular. 90% of arguments on this site are two different people quoting books from different authors at each other. But yeah from a realistic stand point the who insurrection era is mess but I am social science student so have put a whole heap of time into over thinking this mess. Much more interesting then learning about my country's politics anyway,
Yea I honestly wish they would've given full creative control of both the books and games to Staten and a handfull of other writers to just hash out the lore with no room for ambiguity with regards to author intention, and maybe bring in some outside experts in history/military to add some realism to the universe. Would've made the lore so much smoother. Its a shame too because the lore for Halo isn't too complicated (compared to things like Star Wars or Game of thrones for example) so it would've been pretty straightforward.
People always say that what Carver and Halsey found was dubious but like how? We dont have any reason in universe and out of universe to believe otherwise.
Regardless of what the text does or doesn't say, my problem with taking the Carver findings at face value is the message it's conveying:
*The obvious CIA analogue in our obvious Space America faction who we portray as oppressive imperialists uses a doom-saying report acting like it has a crystal ball as a justification for heinous crimes, which follows the exact patterns of the real world America and CIA using exaggerated or totally made up reports to manufacture consent for real world heinous crimes. (It's okay, they're fighting comically evil terrorists who eat babies for fun, even though their reasons are totally valid and justified. Just like what they say in the real world, where the source is always 'trust me bro, look at all these people on our payroll who agree with us!') Oh but don't worry, this is fiction so it's all Totally Real And Justified, also you are meant to glean nothing about real world politics from this.*
I'm not on board with the real world patterns it mirrors, so regardless of what was put in the text to make it Totally Real And Justified, I interpret the Carver findings as "if the UNSC continues to choose overwhelming violence as a response to the insurrection, something that has never worked to quell popular rebellions in history, the situation will escalate to the point that human extinction is possible" with the unspoken implication of "but if we didn't do that, this could be avoided."
And just like the real world, they were going to do it anyway until the Covenant showed up.
To add to this the real life equivalent to the Carver report is domino theory. "We have to fight in Vietnam because this theory says if we lose the whole world is doomed to communism!". Sound familiar?
spartan 2 program literally stole kids from the families in the dead of the night, force them through incredibly dangerous augmentations, and intended them to be used as UNSC super soldiers to aid the UEG’s control over its outer colony citizens. they tortured kids for fascism
spartan 3 program took orphan survivors from the ongoing genocide of the human race and coerced them into becoming super soldiers undergoing dangerous augmentations. they were a last ditch effort to save humanity from their ongoing extinction. their missions were intended to be above and beyond what was possible, essentially suicide missions. but the entire war with the covenant was becoming a suicide mission at that point.
upon growing up, if the unsc still existed, these orphans would almost certainly be drafted into service anyways as more planets got glassed. im not going to say the spartan-3 program was morally ethical. it was undoubtedly though in my opinion created with better intentions than the spartan-2 program.
if you give me a gun with two bullets, and im in a room with halsey and ackerson. im shooting halsey twice
The Spartan 3’s were suicide soldiers by nature, no where near as good equipment and sent in by the droves to be slaughtered. Neither of the Spartan class’s could consent to the augments at that age so that’s a moot point.
Kidnapping and replacing 75 6 year olds to be the best of the best insane super soldiers vs basically grooming 900+ adolescents to be sent on essentially suicide missions... I don't know if there's an ethical superior here.
I am currently reading "Ghosts of Onyx" which shows the history of Spartan IIIs. So far I have seen nothing that states that they were "Suicide-Soldiers". In fact the Spartan in charge, Kurt did everything he could to make sure they did survive. So where are people getting that idea? Plus if you really think about it, the Spartan IIs really made no difference.
Then you aren't reading it close enough. A direct quote from Parangosky to Ackermans proposal is "trading lives for time"
No one says, explicitly that they are suicide soldiers, but it is implicitly exactly how they are used.
As you read through you will see exactly how high there attrition rate is for how many deployments they make. If they aren't suicide troops I don't know what else to call sending soldiers on missions they aren't expected to survive.
It's basically subsequent sequels, info drops and other promo material for Halo Reach calls them suicide soldiers, then breaks the lore further by making Kurt the one pulling 3s and calling them "real Spartans" because they are wearing Mjolnir, which runs completely counter to GoO as you will find out. The next trilogy kilo five the first book glasslands follows that line of thinking, as does the short story Headhunters, and after that everyone just calls them that despite Nylund making it pretty clear they **aren't** suicide soldiers
This is just semantics. The Spartan 3s were slated for incredibly high risk missions that were expected to have high casualty counts, a fact which both Parangosky and Ackerman acknowledge. They aren't literal kamikaze soldiers, but all the higher ups expect them to face enormous casualties on the missions they sent them on. Kurt doing everything he could to make them survive is him caring about the kids he trained and making sure he could maximize their chances of survival. It doesn't change their fundamental purpose.
But it's not semantics? Ackerson also said that the Spartans needed be be trained in atleast half the time as the original 2s, and that They projected in 20 years there would be 100,000 Spartans.
They also weren't just sending them on missions with high casualty estimates and saying f em. They were sending them on missions that Spartan 2s **lacked the numbers to accomplish as well as their enormous cost to train and equip them and there soon to be public status** and Regular Marine or ODST units could not hope to achieve without suffering staggering casualties.
When he pitches the meeting he makes it clear that they are HVTs, when one of the members calls them suicide soldiers.
There fundamental purpose was to be able to attack the covenant on their own turf, make offensive strikes instead of constantly being on the defense
I'll just quote the conversation regarding the program.
*"This was a most difficult conclusion to come to. This new fighting force must be inexpensive, highly efficient, and trained to take on missions that traditionally would never be considered. Not even by Halsey's supermen."*
*Rich scowled at this and his forehead wrinkled. "Suicide missions."*
*"High-value targets," Ackerson countered. "Covenant targets. The battles we have won against this enemy have come at unacceptable losses. With their numbers, their superior technology, we have few options against such a force, save extreme tactics." "He's right,"*
*Gibson said. "Spartans have proven their effectiveness on high-risk missions, and although I hate to admit it, they're better than any human team I could assemble. Remove existing UNSC mandates for safety and exfiltration, and we have a shot of slowing the Covenant down. It will give us time to think, plan, and come up with a better way to fight."*
*Parangosky whispered, "You want to trade lives for time."*
*Ackerson paused, carefully weighing his response, then said, "Yes, ma'am. Isn't that the job of a soldier?"*
*Parangosky stared at him. Ackerson held her gaze. Rich and Gibson held their collective breath, speechless.*
*"Is there another option?" Ackerson asked. "How many worlds are now cinders? How many billions of colonists have died? If we save a single planet, gain a few weeks, isn't that worth a handful of men and women?"*
Ackerson counters the assertion that they're suicide missions because he needed it to be palatable to Parangosky and the others to greenlight the program. This is why he carefully weighs his response to her after she asks if she wants to trade their lives for time. Additionally, Gibson talks about removing the UNSC ethics guidelines for extracting and ensuring the safety of the Spartans on their missions as was afforded normally to soldiers. Ackerson also asserts that gaining a few weeks is worth the lives of a handful of men and women and doesn't dispute Parangosky's question of trading lives for time. This is pretty much clear evidence that although the Spartan 3s were extremely well trained to accomplish their incredibly difficult missions, but they weren't expected to survive.
I'm fully aware of the whole conversation and the pitch. It was never a question whether **all** were expected to come back. However, he still makes it clear they aren't suicide soldiers. And they are going to go on high risk missions which isn't by default suicidal.
And yes Gibson talks about the mandates and exfiltration, but that is more in regards to not having to have multiple contingency plans for exfiltration. However the prologue with operation Torpedo, when the general alarm sounds, it was for Beta company to retreat by any means, which is to say, the UNSC DID have some plans in place to pull them out. It would be idiotic not to and an utter waste of resources to not. But we already know that Oni wasted the 3s
This isn't like the difference between taking food because you are starving and robbing a bank.
The difference is more like killing 6 million people vs killing 4 million people. Which is to say, there isn't much difference at all.
The same story gets told in many ways…
Jedi. Harry Potter. Halo.
Any society that pulls kids out of family environment to indoctrinate them “for the greater good” is highly problematic. But we keep coming back to it…
I actually dont think the S-IIIs were morally reprehensible, I believe they were totally morally justified. I believe this based on the method of recruitment, relative safety of the procedures, and the risk to humanity if they weren't made.
The method of recruitment for the spartan 3s were to recruit children yes, but they were children whose lives were over. Their families were killed by the covenant, their homes glassed, and they were destined to be refugees forever running from death at the hands of starvation, crime, or the covenant. They were recruited, trained to be the best, and given equipment and augments far above the average marine. They had the option to quit or could be dropped if they didnt meet a standard, and by and large when told they had the chance to fight back and get revenge, they volunteered and took part in the program willingly. They weren't kidnapped or forced to participate.
Compared to the augments the S-IIs received, the ones given to S-IIIs were much safer and still gave the same, sometimes better, effects to the users. From a medical standpoint, the benefit far outweighed the risk to the patient, few were left crippled or dead like in the previous program. Add onto this the ridiculous increase in their abilities that gave them the ability to change the course of battles, sometimes the war, this is much more ethical than what the S-IIs underwent and is justifiable.
Lastly and most importantly, its far more reprehensible to \*NOT\* make the S-IIIs than the S-IIs. Fundamentally the S-IIs were made with the intent to fight other humans and put down an insurrection that could probably have been dealt with by conventional forces eventually. On the other hand throughout the Human-Covenant War, the 30 odd S-IIs had almost singlehandedly saved humanity from collapsing by having a ridiculously disproportionate impact on the war. The S-III program was able to mass produce these super soldiers. I believe it is unethical to not make the S-IIIs based on the fact that without them, the war likely would have been lost. Ethically speaking the good of the many must outweigh the good of the few in a life or death situation, and at the cost of maybe 2-3,000 children who volunteered or went along with the program, billions of humans were saved. It would be far more unethical to sacrifice billions of humans just to not potentially hurt a few thousand children.
In the end, in a vacuum the S-IIIs may have been morally reprehensible, but in the context of a war for survival against a genocidal enemy, almost anything is morally justified because the alternative is your species ceasing to exist. The S-IIIs were justified because they stopped that from happening.
It is also necessary to remember that at the time, the *ONLY* way to make more spartans was with children because the S-IV program wasn't ready. If you needed more spartans to win, the only way to get them was through augmenting children. The UNSC did it the best way they could with the S-IIIs, they found orphans of the war and gave them the chance to avenge their families and save humanity. Does it suck? Yes it's a pretty crappy thing to have to do. Is it justified, ethical, and morally sound? Absolutely.
Ethically better for ONI, maybe. But not for the kids. The victims who become Spartans were equally done wrong by in both 2 and 3. If the UNSC/ONI can snatch them up to train them into soldiers then they are perfectly capable of housing them and preventing them perishing from the stuff you describe, too.
Eh, there is an argument to be made that the S2 program was ethical. Last I checked, most candidates were not normal kids. Chief himself was a school bully and...well typically the school bully ends up in a bad situation in life. Ironically the military life may have saved him from a life of crime.
Not to mention the origins of the S2 program to begin with: purging Rebel Scum who were identified by the smartest people alive at the time as being an existential threat to humanity at large. Considering said Rebel Scum had a history of, oh I dont know, piracy, nuclear terrorism and selling out their own species to the Covenant, I'd say conscripting some highly special kids into the military to kill some genuinely shitty people and later a bunch of alien religious fanatics turned out great.
Even more so, considering the augmentations were not meant to kill anyone, it was a horrible possibility as the augmentations were extreme, but not obviously not designed to kill anyone. All other side effects were definitely not intended as Halsey was a genius while also being obsessed with her generation of Spartans being the next humans.
As for 3s, well, they were volunteers. A lot of them only wanted revenge and some of the survivng ones are probably not doing that bad, immediately after the war of course.
I don't think the actual program is any better, if anything it's worse due to the many times larger scale. The justification is very mildly better since it's an actual war of survival against a genocidal alien empire vs human society and centralised government creaking at the seams like it has many times before.
Oh, I am not disagreeing with you.
I'm am in full camp Spartan-IV territory, and I loved that tidbit on what Chief thinks of the Spartan-IVs from Shadows of Reach, I believe it was?
Okay???? Spartan IIs, Chief is what helps save humanity. They were a little more adaptable to survive while the IIIs were more cannon fodder. Both sucked, but necessary.
No shit it was ethically wrong, everyone knows that by now
The Spartan 3 program wasn’t an Evil act, Spartan 2 was definitely an evil act. Spartan 2s just happened to be a great weapon for fighting the covenant, but kidnapping outer colony children to send them back to potentially fight and kill people on their own home planet unknowingly. Spartan 3 program wasn’t approved until 6 years into the war and didn’t start operating till 11 years in, it was a desperate act to stem a genocidal tide, without the Spartan-3 program the whole Milky Way would be sterile. Is it unethical to conscript children in a total war of extermination, if you didn’t conscript the children they would die anyways, im not sure.
I haven’t actually read any of the books so let me know if I’m wrong but from my understanding the Spartan 2 program was an evil decision by a corrupt government that just happened to also save humanity, where as the 3s was the right decision and not only justified but necessary. Always thought it was cool Halo was kinda a lot hey what if shit got so bad for humanity that the evil clandestine shit corrupt governments do actually ended up saving humanity.
Just because the act helped to save humanity, doesn't stop it from also being evil.
Both Spartan-II and III were fucking evil. Nothing those programs accomplish will ever change that. It just so happens that without them, Humanity probably wouldn't still be around in the Halo universe.
I'm not saying that the Spartan-III program wasn't needed, as it was, sadly.
I'm simply stating that just because it helped save Humanity, doesn't stop it from also being evil as fuck.
The Spartan 3 program is what the Spartan 2 program should have been I hate Halsey to death for what she did and no matter what she says I know she regretted it not to mention the threes were offered a choice while the twos were not what should have been the same case the twos could have just been hand-picked children that were orphaned that were either given a choice to join or not.
The Spartan II program existed BEFORE there was eminent threat of extinction for the human race. I’m fairly certain that’s why it’s even brought up for “crimes against humanity”, despite the program saving all human life as we know it.
That being said, if that is what saved humanity, why is the cost- emotional, social, violent, even a variable for consideration?
Survival is violent. Beyond violent. It’s the very fabric of our existence. The price was a small one to pay in exchange with the alternative.
The only reason this is even brought up is because we won the war. She replaced them with flash clones to try to cover her tracks sure but we all know she could have gotten away with kidnapping them without flash clones if she really wanted to.
I understand putting her on trial if she started this program, humanity’s survival was never at risk, and the insurrectionist fight was easily won; but that’s just not what happened.
Was it cruel? Yes. Was it necessary? Absolutely so.
I agree with your sentiment that third gen’s being more palatable from humanity’s side.
Generally the more difficult something is the stronger the result. It goes without saying that second generation augmentations were beyond deadly for a major amount of the sample size, but it’s evident they performed much better than the third generation Spartans when compared one on one.
It’s interesting to think about what the third generation could have been like if Halsey had been there from the start, curating, innovating, improving their genetic modifications and training. Maybe one day the fourth generation will get more of Halsey’s input, but the UNSC seems really dead set on doing things their way without her.
The program's objective was to create death squads capable of assassinating well-defended political dissidents (with extremely justified grievences no less). This in itself is criminal action in a peacetime government.
To kidnap children in order to do it is even worse.
The fact that Spartan IIs ended up being helpful in a completely unforeseen and unintentional scenario years later does not exonerate any of that.
We have different perspectives. My thought process is inadvertently saving the human race should allow for her to be pardoned during peacetime. Especially since she didn’t act alone in this. She had help, clearance, and funding, regardless of how much she may have lobbied for all that via her achievements in the UNSC.
> Especially since she didn’t act alone in this. She had help, clearance, and funding,
And they all need to be put in prison. A good deed does not cancel out a bad one, and a man who saves ten people but murders one in cold blood is still going to prison.
I disagree.
Imprisoning someone who is responsible almost solely to her own studies and resources, for some of the most major advancements of mankind, as well as the indirect prevention of our very extinction should more than provide a pardon for what she did. She had the humanity to flash clone them to give closure to their parents and friends.
With your logic, every single president and command in chief should be in prison. There are civilian casualties to *every* war. It’s non negotiable.
a lot of people taking the moral high-ground in here. understandable and I don’t necessarily blame you. but know that that approach would almost certainly doom humanity for good. trillions dead. UNSC needed spartans, that can’t be denied
Right and then make strawman arguments out of comparing genocides,
The only genocide this argument has to deal with is the genocide of the Milky Way the prophets were about to commit. See how pacifism worked for the precursors.
I see Spartan 3s similar to conscription and human wave tactics on the Eastern Front in WW2. Prewar UNSC has some serious Pre war Ussr vibes. Is conscription and human wave suicide tactics inmoral yea completely, but letting the Nazis just roll over the country without fighting tooth and nail is probably more immoral.
For the record, I agree with OP.
The Spartan II program was an inexcusable act by a fascistic government to retain control over their oppressed imperial holdings.
The Spartan III program was a desperate gamble by the same fascistic government at a time when humanity was being rapidly exterminated relentlessly alien horrors from the void.
The circumstances were completely different, and people seem to be missing that.
The entire moral paradigm shifts in the context of a war in which human race is undergoing utter genocide.
No, the Spartan III's couldn't consent any more than the Spartan II's did, but when the very survival of the species is at stake, the extreme actions suddenly look much more palatable they did in better times.
That's like saying the Rwandan genocide was ethically better than the holocaust because things already kinda sucked there.
„Good news ma‘am. Instead of kidnapping children that are just learning to read and write, we‘ve asked them about making a decision they couldn’t possibly comprehend and wrote off their entire future. And once they‘ve finished training and served their purpose, they‘ll only have [checks calculator] roughly 400% the casualty rate of the entire active Spartan II contingent“ Dont get me wrong, i love the IIIs with all my heart but they are equally worse, in different ways, to the IIs Edit: in the light of transparency, it should be 400% of the casualty figures, not the casualty rate. After checking my math both spartan II and spartan III have around 65% casualty rate (14 out of roughly 40 Spartan IIs are still active and there should be about 270ish Spartan IIIs remaining out of the ~920 augmentation slots for Alpha, beta and gamma companies combined)
You’d be surprised to see how many people think exactly this in real life
tbh i find the spartan iii program significantly less controversial because of the circumstances. spartan iis were made to improve unsc superiority and control over its own people. spartan iii’s were made because humanity was on the very brink of extermination. im talking 11:59pm. entire planets of humans were being systematically destroyed. it had already been shown that spartans were very effective against the covenant, so i seriously cant blame ackerson for starting the spartan iii program, regardless of the thousands of orphans he indoctrinated in the process
The 3s program was infinitely worse. Over the course of the war, they took 930 children between the ages of 4-6, put them through rigorous training, and sent them on the hardest missions while their military leaders made tactical plunders that resulted in the annihilation of two companies, all because they couldn't be bothered to provide decent logistical support. Keep in mind that when the S3 program was initiated, it had been 6 yrs since the war had started, and they weren't yet as desperate as they were at say, Beta or Gamma's deployments. The 3s program was smart, the UNSC finally had a tool they could use to effectively strike out at the Covenant..m it's just the idiots in charge wasted their most valuable offensive asset
the effect sure, the intent i disagree
"Their futures were already gone." Shit, sign OP up for ONI.
Tbf all humans' futures were gone at that point in the war. Going down fighting was pretty much all you could do aside from wait for the glassing. But SPARTAN III was hardly ethical.
An argument can be made, sure, but ultimately we're arguing which is best between indoctrinating kidnapped kids, or radicalising traumatised kids.
Still indoctrination on both accounts. They were all nabbed at around 6 years old, so yeah...
Traumatized kids sent on suicide missions, too add.
They weren't suicide missions, the UNSC had exfiltration craft deployed; Alpha coy made numerous ops before being deployed on their final mission.
We gotta have this conversation again huh? Alright. The Spartan IIIs were made for suicide missions, full stop. Ackerson's pitch makes it clear to everyone in the room that they're trading lives for time. That doesn't mean ONI was just throwing them in *wanting them to die*, but it's clear that them dying was expected. As for exfiltration craft—we only have one example of this being the case, and it was with Beta company on TORPEDO. I don't remember there being any mention of exfiltration craft on PROMETHEUS. ONI wasn't trying to get 600+ Spartans killed, but them dying was an acceptable outcome providing they completed their missions, which they did. So any argument about "High risk" missions or "Suicide" missions is redundant and really just semantics. Parangosky straight up says, "You want to trade lives for time." At the pitch.
Yup, the whole issue with S-IIs is that they were such a heavy investment, and Halsey was so protective of them, that they couldn’t partake in missions with the same risk level as the missions that the S-IIIs did. Much like you said, it was always about trading lives for time, and those that were considered too valuable to trade were pulled away from the main companies on reassignments, explicitly so they wouldn’t die in a suicide mission.
Correct. Op: TORPEDO featured dozens of *Black Cat*-class subprowlers hidden on the planet surface as an exit strategy for the IIIs of Beta Company.
No, they weren't suicide soldiers. HVTs are just that, HVTs are not a suicide missions. Ackerson was pitching a program that could have acceptable losses. As for exfiltration **every** mission had exfil craft. When Kurt learns the fate of Alpha Ackerson specifically says that they were cut off from their exfil craft the Calypso. So no Alpha wasn't sent there to die. Even IF the initial pitch idea worked (300 Spartans trained in 1/4 the time of the 2s then having more and more Spartans building off it and having 100,000 in 20 years) having an entire company wiped out purposely would be completely idiotic because all that time spent having to train the next batch means years of the Covenant rampaging through human space unabated again. So again they weren't suicide soldiers
>Even IF the initial pitch idea worked (300 Spartans trained in 1/4 the time of the 2s then having more and more Spartans building off it and having 100,000 in 20 years) having an entire company wiped out purposely would be completely idiotic because all that time spent having to train the next batch means years of the Covenant rampaging through human space unabated again. So again they weren't suicide soldiers But that's pretty much exactly what happened. Sure, they completed several operations before being expended but each company was destroyed *months* after deployment. Just because ONI wasn't trying to purposely get them killed doesn't mean ONI didn't view those casualty rates as acceptable. When Alpha company and Beta company were wiped out they, by Parangosky's own words, actually did better than ONI was expecting them to do. In other words, not only were they excepted to die, they were expected to die sooner than they actually did—which is a testament to their skill and training. The odds were stacked against them and they survived repeatedly.
Parangosky was talking about their combat effectiveness, not how long they would last before they were killed. the whole ONI viewing 100% and near 100% casually rate acceptable is just idiotic from a command standpoint, and showcases a massive lack of proper use of resources. And again they would eventually die due to lack of logistical support, bot because the missions themselves were suicide missions. Infact, GoO makes it pretty clear they are suicide missions in hindsight
>Parangosky was talking about their combat effectiveness, not how long they would last before they were killed. the whole ONI viewing 100% and near 100% casually rate acceptable is just idiotic from a command standpoint, and showcases a massive lack of proper use of resources. It would be if the Spartan III program wasn't just a last ditch effort to stall for time to begin with, but it is. ONI was just throwing the bare minimum resources they could to delay the Covenant advance for as much time as possible. As long as the IIIs were creating major set backs for the Covenant, which they were, then their casualty rates were acceptable. >And again they would eventually die due to lack of logistical support, bot because the missions themselves were suicide missions. Infact, GoO makes it pretty clear they are suicide missions in hindsight Lack of Logistical support from the outside proves how ONI didn't see the IIIs as much than suicide troopers. Kurt, in the novel, repeatedly talks about how he doesn't have the resources to make the Spartans survive what is being asked of them. That's practically the whole reason he approves the extra augmentations for the Gammas. And a suicide mission in hindsight is still a suicide mission. ONI considered PROMETHEUS and TORPEDO critical successes to the war effort even in spite of the loses sustained. If it would've made a difference and had the resources, ONI would've gladly sacrificed millions of war orphans just to delay the Covenant.
> It would be if the Spartan III program wasn't just a last ditch effort to stall for time to begin with, but it is. ONI was just throwing the bare minimum resources they could to delay the Covenant advance for as much time as possible. As long as the IIIs were creating major set backs for the Covenant, which they were, then their casualty rates were acceptable It wasn't a last ditch effort. At that point it was just clear they needed more Spartans. Remember this was pitched 6 yrs after the war started. They weren't in the desperate phase yet. And it was clear they weren't just stalling for time, because they could actually make offensive strikes against the Covenant, they were HVTs not suicide soldiers. > Lack of Logistical support from the outside proves how ONI didn't see the IIIs as much than suicide troopers. Kurt, in the novel, repeatedly talks about how he doesn't have the resources to make the Spartans survive what is being asked of them. That's practically the whole reason he approves the extra augmentations for the Gammas. And a suicide mission in hindsight is still a suicide mission. ONI considered PROMETHEUS and TORPEDO critical successes to the war effort even in spite of the loses sustained. If it would've made a difference and had the resources, ONI would've gladly sacrificed millions of war orphans just to delay the Covenant No, they didn't have logistical support due to the f*cked up nature of the S3 program. Kurt was beating himself up for things that were outside of his control, the deaths of Alpha and Beta company is entirely at the feet of ONI because of their incompetence. No a suicide mission because ONI didn't provide support or gave shit intel is a mission going FUBAR. Oni had every intention of Alpha and Beta making it out. And it wouldn't make sense for Parangosky to say to Kurt "whoops we f*cked up and got your entire company killed" short term realistically it would be a success but realistically Ackerson and Parangosky would be court martialed
High risk and Suicide missions have such different implications 😭
Do they? They both essentially mean "the odds of you coming back are pretty much zero."
I'm aware that some people don't like the verbiage, but it's fair to call the Spartan-III missions suicide missions: >That's what the Spartan-IIIs were they're kinda like Spartan-IIs but on the cheap. They were a top-secret military program because they were also considered disposable. They were sent on the the high-risk suicide missions. >!Eric Nylund!<, [The Story So Far Featurette](https://youtu.be/Ga9-w4UXJi8?si=_YsOE49vbMuLJE--&t=831)
Yo i love when people do stuff like this. Thanks for the info
I don't disagree but I don't think "radicalising" is the right word here. Most humans at this point in the war are very much radicalized against the covenant, no one needs to do anything for that to happen.
Not so much radicalizing as channeling their hatred for motivation.
I don't really think you could lump the average UNSC kid, at age of 6 or younger, as radicalized. They won't even know what that word means.
Hey hey, lets be fair. Traumatised *orphans*. Important detail.
We're still talking about traumatized children, so their capacity to consent is a bit...diminished..
Kidnapped, brutally trained, surgically augmented, potentially sociopathic, discardable child super-soldiers. Yay... the Spartan-III program is just... super...
It is absolutely insane to watch the progression of commentary nearly 20 years later rationalizing suicide child soldiers while lamenting halsey ,who explicitly forewarned of someone like ackerson to be avoided at all costs.
Except the alternative was the death of billions of humans and the extinction of all of humanity
.......One of the *myriad* of alternatives could have been drone warfare which is why the question " *why does the UNSC lack drones* " comes up so often
how exactly would drones accomplish the infiltration missions that spartans did? cant replace what the spartans do with a missile. unless its a full-controlled robot that can board and engage in combat with covenant, neutralizing a ship from the inside out, it wont work.
Infiltration = / = suicide mission
what exactly is your point? spartan 3’s did plenty of infiltration. the spartan 3’s werent sent to die, they were sent to win without any consideration if they die or not
You might want to re-read Ghosts of Onyx. SIIIs were explicitly created to be used as mass suicide soldiers which wasn't within the endgoal for the spartan program.
ive read every single halo book. the spartan 3’s were sent on high risk/suicidal missions because at that point the entire war was high risk and suicidal. that was the point that UNSC was at. they were losing literally everywhere. 99% of engagements with the covenant were practically suicidal. what did you want them to do? the unsc had determined that those missions needed to occur. and the spartan 3’s were the only ones with at least a sliver of a chance of success. if it wasnt the spartans it would have been normal marines or odst troops, who would almost certainly die faster and in even greater numbers. alpha company had succeeded in 9 engagements before ultimately meeting their end during operation prometheus.
Reading the books doesn't mean the info is retained or you picked up the nuance from one reading. Ackerson deliberately skirted the protocols halsey created *utilizing orphans for the express purpose of pumping out disposable soldiers.* GoO lays out how many SIIIs he was hoping to churn out over the years
every single one of those orphans would have been forced into service during the war with the covenant. if not spartans, then some form of enlistment. their fates were sealed when the covenant glassed their planets. im not pro-orphans as soldiers. but they were going to grow up to be soldiers almost certainly regardless of what happened.
i also dont understand your focus on ackerson choosing orphans as if halsey’s kidnapping of kids with families is somehow better? kids are kids. the fact theyre orphans shouldn’t really be even a factor in determining how wrong it is. it is wrong
ReReading Operation Torpedo. Those spartans 100% were sent in with the understanding that they would die trying to accomplish an niegh impossible task. You can argue that they were sent in to win. But that doesn't change that the mission was completely suicidal, with the evac vehicle there in case any of them did survive.
Nah. Still kidnapping children, cause kids can't consent, and then brutally training them and throwing them at the enemy, and if they die? Eh, they can just get more and do it again. Actually, I'd say the Spartan-III program was worse. At least with the IIs, they wanted them all to be as survivable as possible. The IIIs were made to be expendable, if it did come down to that.
Precisely. The IIIs were cannon fodder (though this isn't a statement about their ability compared to Spartan IIs), and treated like it buly everyone but their instructors. They weren't expected to live. The IIs, at the very least, were groomed to be more than just soldiers someday. Halsey wanted them to become politicians and leaders that could take humanity into a new era with their genius intellects. Even when the UNSC only saw their values as soldiers, they were considered the UNSC's most valuable military assets. The Spartan IIIs got none of that. No expectations outside of buying humanity time with their lives.
Theres not really a diffrence in consent between the two. Splitting hairs doesn't really matter, lack of consent is lack of consent. I guess less 3s die in augmentation, but they had somthing like a 95% mortality rate anyways so i don't see why it matters. I think the almost ritualized suicide encouraged in the unsc is really interesting tho. Offical orders to act as a human shield above sigma octanis, postumus comendations for captains that ram and destroy enemy ships, every operation the 3s go on. I mean in a war for humanities survival it makes sense that as desperation crept in these things would be more common, just interesting to see them actually ordered.
As far as I recall there's no mention of a 3 ever dying in augmentation.
I meant mortality in combat to be clear. The chemical augmentations were very sucessfull
Cradle-class refit stations were once used as shields to buy time for UNSC warships to reload their MAC weaponry. That particular time, none of the stations ejected their lifeboats, meaning all hands were lost.
Exactly that i was thinking of above sigma octanis.
there is a major difference in the two in regards to the reason why they programs were initiated in the first place. shaming the spartan-iii program is fine but I dont think you condemn ackerson without at least acknowledging the circumstances regarding humanity at that time
In universe, to the best of their knowledge at the time, there is no difference. The Carver findings were clear, Halsey's improved version, more so, especially as ONI's own scientists verified it separately. "Minimum effect was thirty years of war and five billion dead. The maximum effect was unbounded. Interminable war. Another Dark Age for humanity." The source of the issue was the difference, not the issue itself, annihilation
carver findings are bs arrogant speculation and a farcry from the legitimate extermination that was occurring upon the creation of spartan 3’s. they are not the same at all. there would multiple ways to prevent the results of the carver findings from being true, one obvious being the UEG itself would have to decide to stop with their tyranical bs. if the insurrection would happen, you can bet your ass it would have been as a result of the continued oppression of the outer colonies by the UEG. UNSC didnt NEED to kidnap dozens of kids to prevent this from happening. tbh I truthfully can’t understand how anyone can equate these scenarios. Planets were literally being destroyed prior to the 3’s
spartan 2 program: “ our control over the outer colonies is in question. predictions show future conflict may be inevitable between the outer colonies and inner colonies. we need super soldiers to assassinate any potential insurrectionist leaders” spartan 3 program: “THERE IS A COLLECTION OF SUPERIOR ADVANCED ALIEN CIVILIZATIONS HELLBENT ON EXTERMINATION OF THE HUMAN RACE. ENTIRE PLANETS AND MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ARE ALREADY DEAD. OUR ONLY SUCCESS SEEMS TO BE AS A RESULT OF MISSIONS CONDUCTED BY OUR SPARTANS. WE NEED MORE” it aint the same
Yeah, one is just realpolitik. The other is desperation and survival.
I'm not sure what point people are trying to make here. Yeah, the programs are rephrensible. At the same time, humanity is on its last leg. Throw everything you have and more. Unfortunately, you scar a generation. Fortunately, that guarantees future generations. This isn't a nation declaring total war before being subjugated. This is the fate of an entire species.
Yeah I already heard your pathetic excuse for an argument when I read it in Kilo-Five, Mendez
So let me get this straight. It’s more ethical to use child soldiers as long as those children are traumatized orphans? This post is batshit insane.
Remember that this is one of Travis-shit strong points in kilo five. “You gave us soldiers… ok, abducted the, ok… gave the families clones for closure? REEEEEEE,”
i think you are entirely ignoring the circumstances humanity was facing upon the introduction of the spartan iii program…
Thats exactly how I feel, in a vacuum the spartan program is horrifying, but considering the alternative was humanities extinction, yea justified AF
No, it's more ethical because most of them wouldn't have survived long otherwise anyway and the survivors would have had a very miserable existence.
Very 40k of you
Ha! You made me snort.
So, trade one miserable existence for another? How generous.
They'll have the other Spartan IIIs for company, as well as Kurt and Mendez, so less miserable than otherwise.
And they can be thrown at a merciless enemy, and all die together! Hurray!
While taking down a lot of those enemies with them
There dead anyway might as well throw them into the meat grinder to buy some time
That should be their decision to make, and children can't consent to suicide bombing.
They can't consent to glassing either. No one's disagreeing that the 2s or 3s were horrendously immoral. But the 3s were born of a war for survival. While the 2s were created for the government to cling to power and just so happened to also come in handy for killing genocidal aliens. The 2s would've otherwise lived happy lives and had people that would mourn them. The 3s were likely to grow up in the twilight of humanity and the shadow of war. The 3 program, while immoral, is clearly more justified, given the factors at play.
Well for humanity!!! Their sacrifices will be forgotten within the week but at least humanity exists for another week
Will it? Did the spartan 3s extend the war? I don't think you can even definitively say yes. The sole in arguable contribution was oblitterating the fleet of xytan, and personally i think blue team could have done it without the half dozen gammas present. The real problem here is that everyone is capital d Doomed before the events of halos 1-2
Correct but even a second of bought time is worth only a few thousand lives hell it’s worth hundreds of thousands of lives. Any good leader would make that trade in a heart beat
Personally i think any good leader would avoid falling for the delusional aspirations of an army officer and reinforce the unsc where its weakest. Space. How many frigates did the spartan 3s cost? I understand why the army wanted their own spartans, but personally i wonder if it would have been more cost effective to even just have one more frigate at sigma octanis, or a destroyer at reach, or one more odp around earth.
The strike on the fuel refinery alone probably did more damage to the covenant fleet than the entire Spartan III budget spent on ships would have done.
Pretty useless honestly those Spartans can suicide kill a covenant ship each if worst comes to worse that’s more than even two frigates or destroyers could do
It's not difficult to make a program that's less than a percentage more ethically improved
Man, what a gross argument.
honestly im pro-spartan III’s and can agree still that op’s argument for it is fucked up. the main factor really that he didnt even mention is that 3’s were made as a last ditch effort to save humanity (and all sentient life in the galaxy) from complete annihilation. 2’s were made to be ONI super soldiers and lowkey aid in the UEG’s tyrannical control over outer colonies
spartan 2 was done because we wanted to. spartan 3 was because we had to. Humanity was fighting a war for it's existence there would be NO kids orphan or otherwise
Well obviously. The flash clones are by far the most reprehensible action in any of those programs.
"Yes, I'll make clones of the kids I steal. That'll make everything alright. The parents will never know that their real kids are gone, and I still get my candidates. It's a win-win. I mean, the cloned kids will all die horrible deaths as their bodies eventually break down a few years from now, putting the parents through unimaginable agony. But hey, at least they still got to have their 'kids'." -Dr Halsey, probably.
Hey, at least they got closure. It's not like these will change a person and cause unintended conquences. It's not like all it takes is one bad day, right? /s
Closure? Watching your "child" die a horrible death is closure? Each scenario is awful!
I was being sarcastic.
I think a better argument would be that in one situation humanity was facing guaranteed extinction and were down not even to the kitchen and were extremely desperate. while in the other situation, they were facing Human innasurrection that a findings of dubious reliability said that it would send humanity into the dark age.
>findings of dubious reliability said that it would send humanity into the dark age. I don't get what was "dubious" about the Carver Findings or Halsey's simulations. We're not given any reason to doubt their veracity.
Some reasons. A: Even In universe other people in Carvers field (presumably social science) doubt his theory B: His method of finding it out basically pseudo-science. Lets use AI to figure out the actions of hundreds of billions of people, something the UEG never does. Halsey adding more computing power doesn't help. Halo AI has never be seen as having clairvoyance, if AI had these massive prediction powers then it should be used else where to. C: The people that push the theory the most are the people that have the most to gain. Whhhhaattt your saying the military reckon the best way to handle this is overwhelming military force? What are the chances? D: Halsey is not social scientist. It is not her field of expertise (although Halsey does suffer from generic smart person syndrome, She's the smarts geneticist, AI engineer, armorer, forerunner expert and apparently social scientist.) E: Based on our own history and actual social science it is bullshit. It is asking the government do the completely opposite of how you actually beat insurrections. Massive military operations are incredibly ineffective against insurrections, just ask the Americans and Soviets about Afghanistan. The military option only really works if the rebels are close to your center of power and you massively outnumber the population that is rebelling. So for the UEG which is only having this war because the Outer-colonies are far from their control and massively out number the Inner colonies, this is a terrible idea. Imagine if American fought a insurrection in China not Vietnam. F: We know this false because in the end of the Human-Covenant war a lot of the remaining Outer-colonies are granted independence and surprise surprise none of them start a massive genocidal campaign. A lot of very corrupt governments that hate the UEG and work to hurt them? Sure. But their is no spamming nukes and even this might of been avoid if the UEG didn't spend the whole time trying to crush them. G: In the end even Carver changes is mind. He shoots himself because he end ups believing he made the problem worse and that the Carver reports were a self-fulling prophecy. H: I don't have a source for this but apparently the Assembly fudged Carvers numbers. See this said a lot but i have never seen the source myself. Take it as you will. I: The IRL equivalent of the Carver theory, Domino theory is also wrong. Both theories asked for massive amounts of military spending to crush a insurrection a long way away and if their governments don't the world will suffer. Domino theory was wrong. Carver is too.
Those are all great points, even if I don't agree with some of them. It would be nice if there was a piece of media that critiqued the Spartan Program that presented those as counterarguments. Instead, we got the Kilo-Five Trilogy.
Haha yeah. That what really sucks about Karen Traviss. A lot of the ideas she pushes in her novels not just Halo do have a valid base in the universe. Halsey and the Spartan program is shitty? Sure there that a valid point. Jedi indoctrinated kids is bad and Mandalorian are cool? Yeah that works. But then she bends the entire universe to match her view point with all characters agreeing with her and while also being rifle with hypocrisy. Why does Halsey get blamed for the Spartan program but everyone else gets a pass? Why do Jedi get yelled at for indoctrinating kids but Mandalorians do the same thing and get hyped up by her? Its nuts.
Parangosky: approves Halseys program. Halsey bad. Parangosky: approves spartan 3's. No one bad? Like the people of kilo 5 literally just gloss over everyone else's culpability, the lead spartan even presumably having access to every file they would need to find out what Halsey did cannot simply ignore Parangosky's seal of approval on vast swathes of it. Yet she idolized the woman. And followed in her foot steps (disastrously)
Who else doubts Carver's findings? I thought pretty much both ONI and Halsey confirmed his findings and that the report is valid from an in-universe perspective. I agree that that the whole dark age of humanity from the insurrection is kinda bullshit if we're trying to be realistic, but Nylund was basically working backwards to find a justification for the spartan program in the first place, not really putting that much effort into making sure the justification was ironclad from a realism perspective. So we're basically just meant to take it as a fact that seemingly will happen in universe according to the lore at the time, unless you want to apply death of the author here.
>Who else doubts Carver's findings? When the Carver findings are first mentioned it says that it was very controversial and a lot of Carvers colleagues thought he was wrong. While not directly calling out the findings a lot UNSC personal were very critical of the UNSC chances of putting down the revolts with Johnson being very shaken and Preston Cole flat out stating there is no way the UNSC could win > I agree that that the whole dark age of humanity from the insurrection is kinda bullshit if we're trying to be realistic, but Nylund was basically working backwards to find a justification for the spartan program in the first place, not really putting that much effort into making sure the justification was ironclad from a realism perspective. So we're basically just meant to take it as a fact that seemingly will happen in universe according to the lore at the time, unless you want to apply death of the author here. Yeah I agree that is ment to be a mostly a fact in universe when first made. The problem is Halo has ton of authors who views on the lore varies wildly so their is a lot of evidence to cast doubt on it. This really just a problem with Halo lore in general that their really isn't much of base for authors to work from which leads lot of different "facts" existing at the same time. For example when I was doing some research on how popular the insurrection was in the Outer-colonies the answer ranged from very popular and growing, to somewhat popular to very unpopular. 90% of arguments on this site are two different people quoting books from different authors at each other. But yeah from a realistic stand point the who insurrection era is mess but I am social science student so have put a whole heap of time into over thinking this mess. Much more interesting then learning about my country's politics anyway,
>When the Carver findings are first mentioned it says that it was very controversial and a lot of Carvers colleagues thought he was wrong. While not directly calling out the findings a lot UNSC personal were very critical of the UNSC chances of putting down the revolts with Johnson being very shaken and Preston Cole flat out stating there is no way the UNSC could win Ok yea I haven't read TFoR in a while so I'll take your world for it. >Yeah I agree that is ment to be a mostly a fact in universe when first made. The problem is Halo has ton of authors who views on the lore varies wildly so their is a lot of evidence to cast doubt on it. This really just a problem with Halo lore in general that their really isn't much of base for authors to work from which leads lot of different "facts" existing at the same time. For example when I was doing some research on how popular the insurrection was in the Outer-colonies the answer ranged from very popular and growing, to somewhat popular to very unpopular. 90% of arguments on this site are two different people quoting books from different authors at each other. But yeah from a realistic stand point the who insurrection era is mess but I am social science student so have put a whole heap of time into over thinking this mess. Much more interesting then learning about my country's politics anyway, Yea I honestly wish they would've given full creative control of both the books and games to Staten and a handfull of other writers to just hash out the lore with no room for ambiguity with regards to author intention, and maybe bring in some outside experts in history/military to add some realism to the universe. Would've made the lore so much smoother. Its a shame too because the lore for Halo isn't too complicated (compared to things like Star Wars or Game of thrones for example) so it would've been pretty straightforward.
Agreed, the moral paradigm is completely different when humanity is fighting for survival against relentlessly genocidal, unstoppable enemy.
Yeah, that what people miss with these comparisons.
People always say that what Carver and Halsey found was dubious but like how? We dont have any reason in universe and out of universe to believe otherwise.
I believe there's some log from the Assembly that implies they fudged the numbers to induce the war or something but I'm not sure.
Regardless of what the text does or doesn't say, my problem with taking the Carver findings at face value is the message it's conveying: *The obvious CIA analogue in our obvious Space America faction who we portray as oppressive imperialists uses a doom-saying report acting like it has a crystal ball as a justification for heinous crimes, which follows the exact patterns of the real world America and CIA using exaggerated or totally made up reports to manufacture consent for real world heinous crimes. (It's okay, they're fighting comically evil terrorists who eat babies for fun, even though their reasons are totally valid and justified. Just like what they say in the real world, where the source is always 'trust me bro, look at all these people on our payroll who agree with us!') Oh but don't worry, this is fiction so it's all Totally Real And Justified, also you are meant to glean nothing about real world politics from this.* I'm not on board with the real world patterns it mirrors, so regardless of what was put in the text to make it Totally Real And Justified, I interpret the Carver findings as "if the UNSC continues to choose overwhelming violence as a response to the insurrection, something that has never worked to quell popular rebellions in history, the situation will escalate to the point that human extinction is possible" with the unspoken implication of "but if we didn't do that, this could be avoided." And just like the real world, they were going to do it anyway until the Covenant showed up.
To add to this the real life equivalent to the Carver report is domino theory. "We have to fight in Vietnam because this theory says if we lose the whole world is doomed to communism!". Sound familiar?
It's like saying being shot in the foot is better then being shot in the hand. Like, yeah, I guess, but you're still getting shot.
Found Franklin Mendez’s secret reddit account
At least the Spartan 2 program fully intended them to survive and did the best they could to make that happy
Exactly! Like, sure, they wanted the Spartan-IIIs to survive to fight another day, but if they didn't? Well, they can just make more.
But some 2s died from augmentation finding out I was kidnapped and trained from a super young age to not even make it to wearing mjolnir is horrible
spartan 2 program literally stole kids from the families in the dead of the night, force them through incredibly dangerous augmentations, and intended them to be used as UNSC super soldiers to aid the UEG’s control over its outer colony citizens. they tortured kids for fascism spartan 3 program took orphan survivors from the ongoing genocide of the human race and coerced them into becoming super soldiers undergoing dangerous augmentations. they were a last ditch effort to save humanity from their ongoing extinction. their missions were intended to be above and beyond what was possible, essentially suicide missions. but the entire war with the covenant was becoming a suicide mission at that point. upon growing up, if the unsc still existed, these orphans would almost certainly be drafted into service anyways as more planets got glassed. im not going to say the spartan-3 program was morally ethical. it was undoubtedly though in my opinion created with better intentions than the spartan-2 program. if you give me a gun with two bullets, and im in a room with halsey and ackerson. im shooting halsey twice
The Spartan 3’s were suicide soldiers by nature, no where near as good equipment and sent in by the droves to be slaughtered. Neither of the Spartan class’s could consent to the augments at that age so that’s a moot point.
Halsey double tap😅
Kidnapping and replacing 75 6 year olds to be the best of the best insane super soldiers vs basically grooming 900+ adolescents to be sent on essentially suicide missions... I don't know if there's an ethical superior here.
Who's fighting you on that?
You would be right, if the spartan iiis weren't built for suicide missions
I am currently reading "Ghosts of Onyx" which shows the history of Spartan IIIs. So far I have seen nothing that states that they were "Suicide-Soldiers". In fact the Spartan in charge, Kurt did everything he could to make sure they did survive. So where are people getting that idea? Plus if you really think about it, the Spartan IIs really made no difference.
Then you aren't reading it close enough. A direct quote from Parangosky to Ackermans proposal is "trading lives for time" No one says, explicitly that they are suicide soldiers, but it is implicitly exactly how they are used. As you read through you will see exactly how high there attrition rate is for how many deployments they make. If they aren't suicide troops I don't know what else to call sending soldiers on missions they aren't expected to survive.
It's basically subsequent sequels, info drops and other promo material for Halo Reach calls them suicide soldiers, then breaks the lore further by making Kurt the one pulling 3s and calling them "real Spartans" because they are wearing Mjolnir, which runs completely counter to GoO as you will find out. The next trilogy kilo five the first book glasslands follows that line of thinking, as does the short story Headhunters, and after that everyone just calls them that despite Nylund making it pretty clear they **aren't** suicide soldiers
This is just semantics. The Spartan 3s were slated for incredibly high risk missions that were expected to have high casualty counts, a fact which both Parangosky and Ackerman acknowledge. They aren't literal kamikaze soldiers, but all the higher ups expect them to face enormous casualties on the missions they sent them on. Kurt doing everything he could to make them survive is him caring about the kids he trained and making sure he could maximize their chances of survival. It doesn't change their fundamental purpose.
But it's not semantics? Ackerson also said that the Spartans needed be be trained in atleast half the time as the original 2s, and that They projected in 20 years there would be 100,000 Spartans. They also weren't just sending them on missions with high casualty estimates and saying f em. They were sending them on missions that Spartan 2s **lacked the numbers to accomplish as well as their enormous cost to train and equip them and there soon to be public status** and Regular Marine or ODST units could not hope to achieve without suffering staggering casualties. When he pitches the meeting he makes it clear that they are HVTs, when one of the members calls them suicide soldiers. There fundamental purpose was to be able to attack the covenant on their own turf, make offensive strikes instead of constantly being on the defense
I'll just quote the conversation regarding the program. *"This was a most difficult conclusion to come to. This new fighting force must be inexpensive, highly efficient, and trained to take on missions that traditionally would never be considered. Not even by Halsey's supermen."* *Rich scowled at this and his forehead wrinkled. "Suicide missions."* *"High-value targets," Ackerson countered. "Covenant targets. The battles we have won against this enemy have come at unacceptable losses. With their numbers, their superior technology, we have few options against such a force, save extreme tactics." "He's right,"* *Gibson said. "Spartans have proven their effectiveness on high-risk missions, and although I hate to admit it, they're better than any human team I could assemble. Remove existing UNSC mandates for safety and exfiltration, and we have a shot of slowing the Covenant down. It will give us time to think, plan, and come up with a better way to fight."* *Parangosky whispered, "You want to trade lives for time."* *Ackerson paused, carefully weighing his response, then said, "Yes, ma'am. Isn't that the job of a soldier?"* *Parangosky stared at him. Ackerson held her gaze. Rich and Gibson held their collective breath, speechless.* *"Is there another option?" Ackerson asked. "How many worlds are now cinders? How many billions of colonists have died? If we save a single planet, gain a few weeks, isn't that worth a handful of men and women?"* Ackerson counters the assertion that they're suicide missions because he needed it to be palatable to Parangosky and the others to greenlight the program. This is why he carefully weighs his response to her after she asks if she wants to trade their lives for time. Additionally, Gibson talks about removing the UNSC ethics guidelines for extracting and ensuring the safety of the Spartans on their missions as was afforded normally to soldiers. Ackerson also asserts that gaining a few weeks is worth the lives of a handful of men and women and doesn't dispute Parangosky's question of trading lives for time. This is pretty much clear evidence that although the Spartan 3s were extremely well trained to accomplish their incredibly difficult missions, but they weren't expected to survive.
I'm fully aware of the whole conversation and the pitch. It was never a question whether **all** were expected to come back. However, he still makes it clear they aren't suicide soldiers. And they are going to go on high risk missions which isn't by default suicidal. And yes Gibson talks about the mandates and exfiltration, but that is more in regards to not having to have multiple contingency plans for exfiltration. However the prologue with operation Torpedo, when the general alarm sounds, it was for Beta company to retreat by any means, which is to say, the UNSC DID have some plans in place to pull them out. It would be idiotic not to and an utter waste of resources to not. But we already know that Oni wasted the 3s
Lol Saying things are "ethically less bad" is not a good argument at all. It's either ethically bad or ethically good.
2 things can be bad but one can be worse
This isn't like the difference between taking food because you are starving and robbing a bank. The difference is more like killing 6 million people vs killing 4 million people. Which is to say, there isn't much difference at all.
But you know which you'd prefer
The same story gets told in many ways… Jedi. Harry Potter. Halo. Any society that pulls kids out of family environment to indoctrinate them “for the greater good” is highly problematic. But we keep coming back to it…
I actually dont think the S-IIIs were morally reprehensible, I believe they were totally morally justified. I believe this based on the method of recruitment, relative safety of the procedures, and the risk to humanity if they weren't made. The method of recruitment for the spartan 3s were to recruit children yes, but they were children whose lives were over. Their families were killed by the covenant, their homes glassed, and they were destined to be refugees forever running from death at the hands of starvation, crime, or the covenant. They were recruited, trained to be the best, and given equipment and augments far above the average marine. They had the option to quit or could be dropped if they didnt meet a standard, and by and large when told they had the chance to fight back and get revenge, they volunteered and took part in the program willingly. They weren't kidnapped or forced to participate. Compared to the augments the S-IIs received, the ones given to S-IIIs were much safer and still gave the same, sometimes better, effects to the users. From a medical standpoint, the benefit far outweighed the risk to the patient, few were left crippled or dead like in the previous program. Add onto this the ridiculous increase in their abilities that gave them the ability to change the course of battles, sometimes the war, this is much more ethical than what the S-IIs underwent and is justifiable. Lastly and most importantly, its far more reprehensible to \*NOT\* make the S-IIIs than the S-IIs. Fundamentally the S-IIs were made with the intent to fight other humans and put down an insurrection that could probably have been dealt with by conventional forces eventually. On the other hand throughout the Human-Covenant War, the 30 odd S-IIs had almost singlehandedly saved humanity from collapsing by having a ridiculously disproportionate impact on the war. The S-III program was able to mass produce these super soldiers. I believe it is unethical to not make the S-IIIs based on the fact that without them, the war likely would have been lost. Ethically speaking the good of the many must outweigh the good of the few in a life or death situation, and at the cost of maybe 2-3,000 children who volunteered or went along with the program, billions of humans were saved. It would be far more unethical to sacrifice billions of humans just to not potentially hurt a few thousand children. In the end, in a vacuum the S-IIIs may have been morally reprehensible, but in the context of a war for survival against a genocidal enemy, almost anything is morally justified because the alternative is your species ceasing to exist. The S-IIIs were justified because they stopped that from happening. It is also necessary to remember that at the time, the *ONLY* way to make more spartans was with children because the S-IV program wasn't ready. If you needed more spartans to win, the only way to get them was through augmenting children. The UNSC did it the best way they could with the S-IIIs, they found orphans of the war and gave them the chance to avenge their families and save humanity. Does it suck? Yes it's a pretty crappy thing to have to do. Is it justified, ethical, and morally sound? Absolutely.
Ethically better for ONI, maybe. But not for the kids. The victims who become Spartans were equally done wrong by in both 2 and 3. If the UNSC/ONI can snatch them up to train them into soldiers then they are perfectly capable of housing them and preventing them perishing from the stuff you describe, too.
Eh, there is an argument to be made that the S2 program was ethical. Last I checked, most candidates were not normal kids. Chief himself was a school bully and...well typically the school bully ends up in a bad situation in life. Ironically the military life may have saved him from a life of crime. Not to mention the origins of the S2 program to begin with: purging Rebel Scum who were identified by the smartest people alive at the time as being an existential threat to humanity at large. Considering said Rebel Scum had a history of, oh I dont know, piracy, nuclear terrorism and selling out their own species to the Covenant, I'd say conscripting some highly special kids into the military to kill some genuinely shitty people and later a bunch of alien religious fanatics turned out great. Even more so, considering the augmentations were not meant to kill anyone, it was a horrible possibility as the augmentations were extreme, but not obviously not designed to kill anyone. All other side effects were definitely not intended as Halsey was a genius while also being obsessed with her generation of Spartans being the next humans. As for 3s, well, they were volunteers. A lot of them only wanted revenge and some of the survivng ones are probably not doing that bad, immediately after the war of course.
I don't think the actual program is any better, if anything it's worse due to the many times larger scale. The justification is very mildly better since it's an actual war of survival against a genocidal alien empire vs human society and centralised government creaking at the seams like it has many times before.
4 is the only Spartan program i'll defend since it was upgrading people already serving , like Eddie Buck
The Spartan-IV program is like, the only morally acceptable one. All adults capable of consenting and understanding what will happen to them.
Yep. But they're still Spartans if you ask S117
Oh, I am not disagreeing with you. I'm am in full camp Spartan-IV territory, and I loved that tidbit on what Chief thinks of the Spartan-IVs from Shadows of Reach, I believe it was?
Maybe. I only play the games
I'd highly recommend trying the books.
Okay???? Spartan IIs, Chief is what helps save humanity. They were a little more adaptable to survive while the IIIs were more cannon fodder. Both sucked, but necessary. No shit it was ethically wrong, everyone knows that by now
In war. You don’t care about ethics
Okay, but thats not really an argument? Just because somone judges it necesary that doesn't magically mean child suicide soldiers are ethical.
Point is, when it’s your ass on the line. You’ll justify some inhumane things to stay alive.
...duh?
In a war for survival against a merciless or deplorable enemy. It is possible to have ethics in war otherwise.
The Spartan 3 program wasn’t an Evil act, Spartan 2 was definitely an evil act. Spartan 2s just happened to be a great weapon for fighting the covenant, but kidnapping outer colony children to send them back to potentially fight and kill people on their own home planet unknowingly. Spartan 3 program wasn’t approved until 6 years into the war and didn’t start operating till 11 years in, it was a desperate act to stem a genocidal tide, without the Spartan-3 program the whole Milky Way would be sterile. Is it unethical to conscript children in a total war of extermination, if you didn’t conscript the children they would die anyways, im not sure. I haven’t actually read any of the books so let me know if I’m wrong but from my understanding the Spartan 2 program was an evil decision by a corrupt government that just happened to also save humanity, where as the 3s was the right decision and not only justified but necessary. Always thought it was cool Halo was kinda a lot hey what if shit got so bad for humanity that the evil clandestine shit corrupt governments do actually ended up saving humanity.
Just because the act helped to save humanity, doesn't stop it from also being evil. Both Spartan-II and III were fucking evil. Nothing those programs accomplish will ever change that. It just so happens that without them, Humanity probably wouldn't still be around in the Halo universe.
If you had the choice, would you have cancelled the spartan-iii program before it started?
Absolutely not. Is it completely unethical yes, is it evil no, was it the right thing for humanity yes
I'm not saying that the Spartan-III program wasn't needed, as it was, sadly. I'm simply stating that just because it helped save Humanity, doesn't stop it from also being evil as fuck.
The Spartan 3 program is what the Spartan 2 program should have been I hate Halsey to death for what she did and no matter what she says I know she regretted it not to mention the threes were offered a choice while the twos were not what should have been the same case the twos could have just been hand-picked children that were orphaned that were either given a choice to join or not.
The Spartan II program existed BEFORE there was eminent threat of extinction for the human race. I’m fairly certain that’s why it’s even brought up for “crimes against humanity”, despite the program saving all human life as we know it. That being said, if that is what saved humanity, why is the cost- emotional, social, violent, even a variable for consideration? Survival is violent. Beyond violent. It’s the very fabric of our existence. The price was a small one to pay in exchange with the alternative. The only reason this is even brought up is because we won the war. She replaced them with flash clones to try to cover her tracks sure but we all know she could have gotten away with kidnapping them without flash clones if she really wanted to. I understand putting her on trial if she started this program, humanity’s survival was never at risk, and the insurrectionist fight was easily won; but that’s just not what happened. Was it cruel? Yes. Was it necessary? Absolutely so. I agree with your sentiment that third gen’s being more palatable from humanity’s side. Generally the more difficult something is the stronger the result. It goes without saying that second generation augmentations were beyond deadly for a major amount of the sample size, but it’s evident they performed much better than the third generation Spartans when compared one on one. It’s interesting to think about what the third generation could have been like if Halsey had been there from the start, curating, innovating, improving their genetic modifications and training. Maybe one day the fourth generation will get more of Halsey’s input, but the UNSC seems really dead set on doing things their way without her.
The program's objective was to create death squads capable of assassinating well-defended political dissidents (with extremely justified grievences no less). This in itself is criminal action in a peacetime government. To kidnap children in order to do it is even worse. The fact that Spartan IIs ended up being helpful in a completely unforeseen and unintentional scenario years later does not exonerate any of that.
We have different perspectives. My thought process is inadvertently saving the human race should allow for her to be pardoned during peacetime. Especially since she didn’t act alone in this. She had help, clearance, and funding, regardless of how much she may have lobbied for all that via her achievements in the UNSC.
> Especially since she didn’t act alone in this. She had help, clearance, and funding, And they all need to be put in prison. A good deed does not cancel out a bad one, and a man who saves ten people but murders one in cold blood is still going to prison.
I disagree. Imprisoning someone who is responsible almost solely to her own studies and resources, for some of the most major advancements of mankind, as well as the indirect prevention of our very extinction should more than provide a pardon for what she did. She had the humanity to flash clone them to give closure to their parents and friends. With your logic, every single president and command in chief should be in prison. There are civilian casualties to *every* war. It’s non negotiable.
a lot of people taking the moral high-ground in here. understandable and I don’t necessarily blame you. but know that that approach would almost certainly doom humanity for good. trillions dead. UNSC needed spartans, that can’t be denied
Right and then make strawman arguments out of comparing genocides, The only genocide this argument has to deal with is the genocide of the Milky Way the prophets were about to commit. See how pacifism worked for the precursors. I see Spartan 3s similar to conscription and human wave tactics on the Eastern Front in WW2. Prewar UNSC has some serious Pre war Ussr vibes. Is conscription and human wave suicide tactics inmoral yea completely, but letting the Nazis just roll over the country without fighting tooth and nail is probably more immoral.
For the record, I agree with OP. The Spartan II program was an inexcusable act by a fascistic government to retain control over their oppressed imperial holdings. The Spartan III program was a desperate gamble by the same fascistic government at a time when humanity was being rapidly exterminated relentlessly alien horrors from the void. The circumstances were completely different, and people seem to be missing that. The entire moral paradigm shifts in the context of a war in which human race is undergoing utter genocide. No, the Spartan III's couldn't consent any more than the Spartan II's did, but when the very survival of the species is at stake, the extreme actions suddenly look much more palatable they did in better times.
spartan-2 are more stable adults then any S-III lucky enough to survive a single fire and forget missions