> 2533274796974117;6:
> Spartans are not numerous enough to be their own branch of a massive interstellar military like the UNSC with millions upon millions of service-members. They are battalion or regiment strength at best from what we have seen in the fiction, and thus should still be considered a Special Missions Unit within the Army or Navy.
>
> I know it is now officially canon but Spartans being their own military branch is silly and makes zero sense.
and now I shall introduce you to 343 Industries (as well as Halo 4 & 5).
Yeah a separate branch is a large stretch, first of all the term branch is a rather vague one but it generally refers to a subdivision of a nations armed forces that deals with a specific theater of war. As for branches they tend to be independent from one another, manage their own administration and budget, and effectively operate separate from each other. Now back in the days where militaries were more like mobs the separating of branches were simple, you had those that fought on land, and those that fought in the water. Now you have branches that could be for a special job (like Norway’s Medical corps for their position as a non-combatant in the military structure) or on different theaters, like the Royal Air Force. Now many nations don’t organize their military the same way that the US does. Take China for example, the Chinese Navy is a subordinate of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army, where as the US have the Navy as peers with the Army.
The biggest problem with the Spartan branch is the role of administration and logistics. It is almost like 343 said since they are the super elite force they should be an entire branch which sort of defeats the purpose of an elite force because elite is the few not the many. It would be akin to Donald Trump saying that SEALs should now be their own branch. At first Spartans fell most likely under ONI which is the Military Intelligence organization of the UNSC Navy but only with more power than the Soviet Cheka and less oversight than the -Yoink!- of the 3rd Reich. Now by the definition of the name ONI falls under the UNSC Navy, and it is assumed that the UNSC Marine Corps falls under that as well but still not too clear on what level of subordination the marines fall under, at least for the Spartan II program. Now with Halo Reach the Spartan III program was under Reach’s military which was the Army a separate branch of the UNSC military and one that seems to act more in a Planetary Defense Force role.
> 2533274838418174;5:
> A simple search for ‘spartan branch’ on Halopedia turned up this large, in-depth article with all the information that could answer your question far more accurately than asking on this forum could.
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> https://www.halopedia.org/Spartan_Operations
Yeah whatever, this is a perfect example at the inexperience of story telling 343 has. When looking at explanations like this all of a sudden Halo 5’s story starts to become a little bit clearer, not in the story itself that is still a mess but how the writers got to that story. It is almost like a post-mortem of Game of Thrones.
So the Spartans are their own branch, well that means now they have to manage their own administration and logistics as well as lobby with the Security Council for their budget, negotiate contracts with Traxus for work that doesn’t involve putting sniper bullets in skulls of another human or alien. So that likely means a lot of non-spartans, after all not everyone in the Airforce is a pilot or aircrew. So it is already able to lobby with the Security Council as it has been given its own branch but who to do the paperwork. That would be the ones that failed the augmentation process but the whole concept of the Spartan IV is that the augmentation process would carry less risk of failing so as not to cripple able bodied soldiers, so in its very nature it would cripple its own logistics. Also when maintaining the machinery and weapons is likely going to need able bodied laborers. So yeah given the tooth (Spartan) to tail ration (non-spartan) it would have to be larger than the typical 1:10 (1 spartan, 10 non-spartans) ratio that most militaries have when conducting logistics for the combat arms.
But since you brought up sources the real question is who came up with this idea? As of now the usual suspects are the writers, the ones for the comic and the books. Well looking at that list you got, Karen Traviss, Christopher Schlerf, Duffy Boudreau. None of them have a resume I would find to be on good authority other than the fact that they are career fiction writers mostly for licensed I.P. (i.e. Star Wars). The story for the Original Halo Trailer while not the greatest story ever, of all time, it clearly was good for what it was telling. The books even if one of them was published before the release of the game had often conflicted with the game, I know a lot of Nyland’s fans would swear that he is the sole authority on Halo fiction, but I would argue that Joseph Staten is that (even if I didn’t care much for Contact Harvest). So these books are often something that just has to be taken with a grain of salt. Still the stories of H4 and H5 are much like the writting of Star Wars The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. Why did the UNSC make the Spartan’s their own branch, why did the 1st order make another planet sized superweapon. It only makes sense if you basically decide that it is better if you don’t think too much about it, because the only reason is the writers put it in.