Project VENATOR

The Office of Naval Intelligence has had a long history of biological warfare development, stretching back even before the formation of the UNSC during its early history as part of the United States military. Under the UNSC, Geneva Conventions forbidding such weapons have officially been strictly enforced - unofficially, Project: VENATOR was one of dozens of projects established to find biological weapons that would be able to inflict devastating casualties on Covenant populations, slowing their advance and perhaps driving them to negotiate for a stalemate, earning humanity enough time to reinforce its remaining defences and produce counters. Records pertaining to Project VENATOR have long since been deleted or otherwise destroyed, but investigations by Operation: VORAUSSICHT in 2557 have uncovered much of its history, the personnel involved, and the project aims. No products of VENATOR ever saw deployment during the Human-Covenant War, though a single Blood Covenant colony has been implicated as being the victim of a test deployment by VENATOR during this later conflict, immediately prior to being shut down by VORAUSSICHT.