So I was researching the Spartan III Headhunters and in order to become one, candidates had to complete two missions before they even entered the program right? So:
Considering the requirements were for them to have survived the training missions, I’m guessing they were against actual bad guys. Likely nothing incredibly dangerous, since they had actual specialized training afterwards, but dangerous enough. SPARTAN training was brutal, but not brutal enough to actually kill them, and I doubt they’d risk losing potentially one of their best assets on an irrelevant training mission. As for what the missions were, they would logically be similar to actual Headhunter missions. Stealth, sabotage, that sort of thing. Probably not much large scale, direct combat.
According to the wiki: “Only Spartan-IIIs who had survived two or more specially assigned training missions would be evaluated for induction into the Headhunters.”
This is interesting as this suggests that only some Spartan 3s were actually given training missions considering they use the words “specially assigned” and “survived”. Even for Spartan 3s the UNSC would not want to waste their assets so it would be reasonable to assume that very few Spartan 3s received these missions and that those missions were not necessarily suicide level. However some candidates definitely did die on these missions as hinted by the quote. So considering that some died, its also reasonable to assume that these missions occurred in the real world and not on Onyx.
As for the nature of these missions it can only be assumed that they were similar to what would have been expected from headhunters (AKA: sabotage and reconnaissance). This makes sense since: “Once an overall list of potential candidates was compiled, each soldier’s personal files and mission reports were analyzed against a set series of parameters calculated by the top Office of Naval Intelligence specialists within the Beta-5 Division.”
So it seems that the screening process for the Headhunters was very thorough, and since most candidates only completed 2 missions before being selected I can only assume that these missions would be used to test how these candidates would perform in a role similar to a Headhunter. As such these missions must have been close to what actual Headhunters were expected to perform.
Ultimately there is little information to go on, and all this is pure speculation but I hope is was enough to satisfy your answer.
Cheers.
Sweet! Thanks guys thanks for the info and speculation. More questions may come. Thank You.
How do I become a headhunter