History
- Main Article: History of the UNSC
Interplanetary War
The UNSC has its roots in World War II, which would form its parent organization, the United Nations. The UNSC was actually formed and fashioned as the result of a series of brutal conflicts across the Solar System and Humanity's space confines between 2160 and 2164, most prominently among them the Jovian Moons Campaign, The Rain Forest Wars, and a series of battles on Mars.[5] The United Nations Space Command, as organized and orchestrated as it seems is actually an emergency military government formed in such strifes. These encounters were centered, around UN clashes with dissident political movements, the most important of which were the "Koslovics" and the "Frieden". More specifically, the Frieden movement was a fascist organization based on the Jovian Moons, though they received backing from some corporations operating in the United German Republic on Earth, while their ideological opponents, the Koslovics, formed a Marxist-Leninist group centered around the leadership of Vladimir Koslov.
The war began with an attack on UN Colonial Advisors on the moon of Io, one of the moons of Jupiter, but would spread to Mars and parts of South America in the Rain Forest Wars. These events culminated in a UN buildup in the 2160s, which would result in the second of the great reforms, the first being from the league of nations into the UN. The second reformed the UN from a largely diplomatic organization to a permanent United Earth Government as an ultimate power to lead the human race by 2170.
Colonization
The four-year long war put the spotlight on problems facing the overpopulated planet, and the Rain Forest Wars also exacerbated the problems relating to food distribution. The ensuing famine and societal problems related to the post-war population boom providing the spark to change the political nature of governance on Earth and elsewhere, leading to the political system seen in the 26th Century.
These pressures also helped make space colonization seem more attractive in later centuries, as the UN government would sign off on a colony ship program that was revealed in 2310 to ease the burden on the ailing home world. This would not have been possible without the invention of the Slipspace Shaw-Fujikawa drive in the late 2200's, which allowed the ships to travel far greater distances than ever before.
It took 52 years before the first colony ship, the Odyssey, was launched, and what became the so-called Inner Colonies were not fully colonized until the end of the 24th century. The apex of UNSC colonization would come in 2492, when more then 800 worlds were under human control and were at various stages of development. By this time, a ring of Outer Colonies was providing the United Nations with the raw materials that made the macro-economy work; the political power, however, remained with the before mentioned Inner Colonies. The massive difference in wealth distribution and political power, which became a hallmark of humanity by this period, led to new threats of secession from the outer ring. Fearing the consequences of the breakup of the interstellar empire and seeing the benefits of avoiding all-out war to defend their hold on the colonies, the UNSC would embark on the predecessors to the SPARTAN-II program in 2491, beginning with the ORION Project.
The Human-Covenant War
- Main Article: Human-Covenant War
2525 marked an important turning point in human history; it would mark the beginning of the great technological advancement, the unification of a divided and fractured human race, and the first contact of humanity and an extra-terrestrial intelligence, the Covenant. It would also see a majority of the UNSC's 800 colony worlds glassed, and billions of colonists and military personnel slaughtered by orbital plasma bombardment and planetary invasion. Thus began the Human-Covenant War with the First Battle of Harvest.
Stemming from the chance encounter of Human and Covenant forces at Harvest, the first contact made between humanity and the Covenant involved the ship Minor Transgression, and was less peaceful than the second contact made between the two factions. A less aggressive meeting between representatives of the two factions took place on the fields of Harvest, but the peaceful meeting soon turned into a blood bath, with the Covenant claiming the planet for the numerous "Forerunner relics" present, slaughtering most of the colony's population.[6]
On April 20, a scout ship, Argo, was sent to investigate the cessation of communications between Harvest and the rest of the UNSC. Before being destroyed by Covenant forces, it discovered that everything on the planet had been completely incinerated, and the surface covered by fields of magma, leaving nothing alive. Soon after the Heracles battle group, consisting of the frigates Arabia and Vostok and the destroyer Heracles was sent to find out what had happened. On October 7, the battle group dropped out of Slipspace and to Harvest. In orbit around the remains of the colony world was a single alien ship which proceeded to attack the battle group, destroying all the ships except one. Intercepted communications identify the enemy as the Covenant, a caste-driven, theological organization made up of several alien species. The message "Your destruction is the will of the gods... and we are their instrument" was broadcast in perfect English.[7]
Since the later Second Battle of Harvest in 2531, where a huge human Fleet led by Vice Admiral Preston Cole barely won against a smaller covenant fleet in a symbolic "victory" for humanity, the humans' grip on their territories declined significantly in the course of their struggle. Of the more than 800 colony worlds, the Covenant had managed to capture the majority, if not all of the Outer Colonies, and a portion of the Inner Colonies. By 2552, the UNSC Navy, Marine Corps, Army, Air Force and Militia, outnumbered and out-gunned, had managed to slow down the Covenant's inexorable progress through former human space, but the situation was dire. In desperation, HIGHCOM ordered a high-risk Op, sending the Spartan-II super soldiers, the best soldiers ever fielded by humanity, to insert into Covenant space, capture a high-ranking Prophet, and return to UNSC space in an attempt to ransom for a truce. Before the operation began, the Covenant found and destroyed the planet Reach, killing most of the Spartans and a large portion of the UNSCDF, inadvertently stopping the operation and rendering most of the Spartans MIA.
A single ship, the Pillar of Autumn managed to escape the planet, with two Spartans on board, Linda, who was presumably dead in the Battle of Reach and the Master Chief. The ship followed co-ordinates derived by the AI Cortana to a Ring-world known as Halo. There the Master Chief destroyed a large Covenant fleet and the ringworld itself. After hijacking a Covenant Flagship known as Ascendant Justice, the Spartan reunited with the remaining survivors from Halo and the destruction of Reach and attacked a force of Covenant ships in Operation: FIRST STRIKE, one of the most successful UNSC operations against the Covenant in the entire war.
By October of 2552, the Covenant had haphazardly discovered the position of the human home world, Earth, and sent a preliminary task force there, believing it to be the location of the Ark, an ancient Forerunner relic. They encountered staunch resistance, and were initially fended off. Further complications arose from the political and religious crisis that emerged in the wake of a UNSC operation to assassinate a Prophet, and the secession of the Elites from the hegemony, leading to the Covenant Civil War, further throwing the Covenant into chaos. Nevertheless, by November, what was left of the Covenant Loyalists had subjugated large parts of Earth, devastating much of the planet. Only their retreat through a Forerunner portal in Africa, and the arrival of the Sangheili Fleet, stopped the utter destruction of the UNSC and Earth itself.
The UNSC and Elite forces launched a joint operation to destroy the Covenant Loyalists once and for all at the Ark, stopping the installation from firing the Halo Array, killing the Covenant's last remaining leader, the Prophet of Truth, and destroying the bulk of the Loyalists' remaining forces. On March 3, 2553, the Human-Covenant War officially ended in a victory for the UNSC and the Covenant Separatists, but at a high price, with most major military outposts destroyed except for Earth as well as many, if possibly not all, colonies destroyed, although it seems that most of the colony worlds were not glassed during the war, with only seventy-six worlds known to have been totally destroyed. However, it is presumed that untold billions of humans had been killed from 2525-2553.