VOLSUNG Initiative

For the most part, research into the creation and deployment of "supersoldier" warfighters was mostly undertaken by the Navy, and produced some spectacular successes. The original Project ORION was taken over from the Colonial Military Administration, and converted into the SPARTAN-I Program, fielding operatives whose effectiveness was unquestionable, despite some severe drawbacks. The later SPARTAN-II and SPARTAN-III Programs would build on the success of ORION, using children to better fit the augmentation requirements, training them and fielding them using state-of-the-art powered armour. The dramatic success of these two programs, both creating and fielding operatives who surpassed any warfighter in the history of human warfare, would play an integral role in the survival of the human race against the Covenant war machine. These were not the only programs, however. The Marine Corps, Army and Air Force all set up their own powered armour and supersoldier programs, with varying degrees of success - the Air Force would abandon its augmentation project, and would eventually adopt the ARONDIGHT series of combat armour systems. Both the Army and the Marine Corps would pour money into augmentation research projects, including GENONE and CHISEL, and set up their own supersoldier programs. The Marine Corps ran TROJAN; the Army set up VOLSUNG, aka. Special Warfare Group Nineteen.

Rather than kidnapping more children and training and augmenting them, the initiators of both TROJAN and VOLSUNG decided to return to the roots of the SPARTAN Program - ORION. Former ORION operatives were recruited as advisors and trainers, and volunteers were recruited from each respective branch. While TROJAN would recruit a high number of volunteers, its use of untested augmentation materials and procedures would see a high mortality rate. VOLSUNG would use procedures gained secretly from SPARTAN-III, and would have a much lower mortality rate, only 10%, but assembled a smaller initial roster - only twenty for the first generation of VOLSUNG personnel. Successive generations would improve on these procedures and use more personnel, inverting the trend compared to TROJAN, eventually producing two hundred Volsung personnel, in twenty special warfare teams operated by the UNSC Army. The key difference between TROJAN and VOLSUNG, however, was its development of powered assault armour with which it equipped its field operatives. After the conclusion of the Great War, Operation: VORAUSSICHT would turn its attention to VOLSUNG and TROJAN, and although a small number of personnel were prosecuted for breaching November Black-classified projects, most VOLSUNG personnel would continue to operate, and further generations were approved by CENTCOM.

History
With more than a dozen SPARTAN-II and hundreds of SPARTAN-III personnel seeing deployment in combat operations against Insurrectionist and Covenant targets, the effectiveness of augmented warfighters was proven beyond any doubt. There were, however, problems in both projects - they relied too heavily on genetic profiling, restricting the number of available personnel for recruitment, and also depended on using prepubescent children to better fit the augmentation procedures and improve swuccess rates. In the latter, SPARTAN-III would pioneer augmentation advancements and improve mortality rates dramatically, building on information gained from Projects GENOME and CHISEL. According to Ackerson, these procedures might someday be applied even to personnel outside of the genetic parameters of the SPARTAN-II and III Programs - that day was much nearer than even Ackerson suspected.

Begun in 3535, Project VOLSUNG was an attempt by the UNSC Army Special Warfare Command to produce its own equivalent to the successful ORION Project of the CMA. Run in parallel with Project TROJAN, VOLSUNG used some shared material and personnel, such as former ORION operatives for training and advisory purposes, though it was nevertheless conducted autonymously under the Army's SpecWarCom chain of command and had slightly different objectives. While TROJAN focussed purely on augmentation and training, VOLSUNG also aimed to improve the arsenal of weapons and equipment available to SpecWarCom warfighters, modernising some and replacing others. The most radical aspect of VOLSUNG was its aim to reintroduce powered armour as a viable option for unaugmented personnel. Originally, it made use of the improvements being gradually phased in by Project ARONDIGHT, but as VOLSUNG progressed and the success of its first generation became apparent, the Army would increase its research budget, hoping to develop a full powered armour series for use by special forces operatives. The SIGURD Mark I through IV would see deployment during the Great War to great effect, but would be replaced afterwards by the VAJRA-III Mark I through XII series of armour systems, incorporating advances that were unavailable to its predecessors, including energy shield and DEW technology developed by Project EXCALIBUR. VOLSUNG's acquisition of EXCALIBUR assets would spark an inquiry, and although no arrests were made four junior assistants were dismissed and dishonourable discharged for their part in the acquisition of classified materials.

The first generation of VOLSUNG personnel was begun in 2535 using a total of twenty experienced special warfare personnel. Four ORION personnel were hired by the Army on an advisory capacity, and for additional training. While each volunteer was a combat veteran, either against the Insurrection or the Covenant, but ORION personnel faced problems that they would have no experience with - enhanced reflexes and strength would produce movement problems, making the augmentees clumsy and uncertain during the initial adjustment period. Worse, potential problems with augmentation acceptance by the augmentees was a major contern - the mortality rate of ORION and SPARTAN-II had many of VOLSUNG's head personnel nervous, and the improvements by SPARTAN-III did little to allay them. Of these twenty, only two would die during the augmentation process, SPC F. Tanner and SGT. U. Ulysses, and the other eighteen would experience few permanent side-effects. This initial generation, designated Special Warfare Team JAGUAR. Retroactively, they were also assigned Assault Group Aleph, using the Semetic alphabet as the basis for its designations. With ORION personnel getting Assault Group Aleph back up to combat readiness over the next five months, JAGUAR would see deployment in early 2536 during Operation: VENERATION, staging an assault against a Covenant staging point sixteen lightyears past the UNSC's outer boundaries. The operation was an uncontestable success, destroying an enemy space station, thirty ships and hundreds of personnel, rendering it useless to the Covenant, all with only two losses to SpecWar Team JAGUAR. Subsequent deployments on Minister against Insurrectionist attempts to overthrow the pro-UNSC government would reinforce the Army's faith in JAGUAR and VOLSUNG in general.

Now backed personally by Lieutenant General Richard Emmerich, the second generation of VOLSUNG, Assault Group Beth, was begun in 2540 and produced ninety warfighters - SpecWar Teams PANTHER, LYNX and CARACAL. Furthermore, the Lieutenant General begun the PAE subsection to develop powered armour for the members of VOLSUNG, hoping at the least that it would restart the UNSC's interest in non-Spartan combat exoskeleton systems. The initial prototypes borrowed heavily from the Marine Corps earlier CYCLOPS series, bulky and mechanical. The decision was eventually made to adopt the ARONDIGHT series of improvements being introduced into service among the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, at least in the interim. VORAUSSICHT investigators suspect that the Lieutenant General ordered two subordinates to acquire stolen EXCALIBUR material for use in reengineering VOLSUNG's own systems, though the actual theft itself was conducted by other personnel, and the material stolen was related to improvements being researched by the VAJRA-II subgroup of Project: MJOLNIR. Afterwards, improvement was rapid - early prototypes became smaller, more compact, and streamlined. Later acquisitions made by these two subordinates, possibly without the Lieutenant General's orders, would see the adoption of limited energy shield technology and DEW offensive systems for the SIGURD Mark II and III PAE systems, and the SIGURD Mark IV would refine these further. During the Great War, Assault Group Aleph and Beth would operate these suits in combat deployments against Covenant forces on seven different colony worlds to great effect in materiel recovery, personnel extraction or assassination, and general combat situations.

After the war, many of the EXCALIBUR materials would see widespread introduction into service, rendering the SIGURD series out of date. In conjunction with Project: VAJRA-III, a research and development program run by the Military Intelligence Division, VOLSUNG would replace their SIGURD suits with more advanced VAJRA-III armour suits, starting with the V-III[B] through to the V-III[J] at the start of the Second Great War. These suits were first field tested by the third generation of VOLSUNG operatives, Assault Group Gimel, composed of SpecWar Teams NIMRAVID, CHEETAH and LEOPARD, during Operation: TACK HAMMER in 2555. The success of VOLSUNG as a whole would inspire the Army to adopt the augmentations and training developed for these operatives ona wider scale on its Special Warfare Divisions. Several of these groups would take part in inter-branch operations, such as Operation: VORAUSSICHT, with SpecWar Teams LEOPARD and NIMRAVID participating in the investigation into illegal aspects of VOLSUNG, with the two teams staging a successful assault on an Insurrectionist base and extracting personnel who had infiltrated EXCALIBUR. Other teams would see deployment against the Governors of Contrition, fighting on dozens of worlds in UNSC, Sangheili and New Covenant territory. In summary, VOLSUNG would eventually be declared the UNSC Army's most effective special warfare unit besides the SPARTAN-III program. A number of operations would be conducted with joint assistance from Project TROJAN, which fielded more operatives of slightly superior quality but lacked the powered armour systems. It is a point of heated contention between TROJAN and VOLSUNG personnel which group was more successful, and bar fights between personnel from each have been eqtremely destructive.

Project personnel

 * Lieutenant General Richard Emmerich - original commanding officer of the UNSC Army's Special Warfare Group Nineteen. Forced to retire from VOLSUNG by the investigation of Codename: RAINFALL into his involvement in acquiring stolen EXCALIBUR materiel. Later discovered murdered in his apartment in Washington D. C., URNA.
 * Brigadier General Anthony Stubblefield - commanding officer of Special Warfare Group Nineteen after 2552. Despite being a part of the Marine Corps chain of command, he agreed to head the project after overtures were made by the Military Intelligence Division, reorganising VOLSUNG and removing a number of personnel he deemed suspect.

Former ORION Advisors

 * Sgt.Maj. Avery J. Johnson - a UNSC Marine Corps non-commissioned officer, Johnson was hired between 2535 and 2540 to advise VOLSUNG in its inception phases, including the potential problems that VOLSUNG operatives might face. His supplemental training would be invaluable, even after his reassignment to a Naval Special Warfare unit. After his death in 2552, Johnson would be referred to as "VOLSUNG ONE" in a Chicago memorial by his VOLSUNG coworkers.
 * Lt. Rene Valfaman - UNSC Army ORION operative, commander of a special warfare unit, reassigned to VOLSUNG after Johnson's departure in 2540. As an advisor, Valfaman would deal with a number of problems stemming from lingering concerns among the Army leadership, setting to work to convince doubters that the results of Assault Group Aleph were replicable in Assault Group Beth. Valfaman was killed in action during the invasion of Reach, though he would use a SIGURD Mark III suit to allow four civilian shuttles to escape the combat theatre, subsequently designated VOLSUNG TWO after the end of the war.
 * SSgt. Henry Xoranth - UNSC Army ORION operative, recruited from retirement to assist in the creation of Assault Group Gimel. Became an active participant in VOLSUNG combat operations, seeing combat in three combat theatres alongside his VOLSUNG recruits, and is affectionately referred to as VOLSUNG THREE despite surviving.

Remarks

 * "After the war, the augmentations would become standard fare on special warfare personnel. We're not exactly Spartans, but we're closer than anyone else since ORION."
 * "I'd say they single-handedly saved non-Spartan powered armour research. After VAJRA-I collapsed, and the less than stellar results of ARONDIGHT, the VOLSUNG Powered Assault Exoskeleton is the only suit to enter service since the Cyclops. It may not be MJOLNIR, but it's something. And don't get me started on VAJRA-III!"
 * "Johnson was a legend in VOLSUNG - he was professional, he was likeable, and above all he was one lethal Mike Foxtrot. When we heard he'd bit the dust at the Ark, I don't mind telling you there were a few teary eyes in the room."
 * "VOLSUNG wasn't classified November Black, but it used materials from EXCALIBUR, which was - that was probably why VORAUSSICHT was pressured to drop its harrassment. After Emmerich retired and his two henchmen were dishonourably discharged, that was the end of our involvement in EXCALIBUR."