Project JAVELIN (ONI)

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Project JAVELIN was the first of two augmented soldier programs to use the title, with the second being assigned the moniker as a part of an effort by Codename: CALIFORNIA to cover his tracks. Formed alongside the initial projects, JAVELIN was intended to improve on both Halsey and Roe’s formula via a series of alterations to the recruitment, training, and augmentation process in hopes of producing superior operators. In practice, JAVELINs would struggle to set themselves apart from their SPARTAN peers in terms of performance or feats, thus failing to justify the additional expenses, and would not continue past the initial generation. Nevertheless, the project's supersoldiers would prove instrumental to humanity's survival through the great war, making no shortage of sacrifices. 
Though unable to create soldiers above SPARTAN-grade, the JAVELIN Project it made up for its failures in the developments in biochemical, genetic, and cybernetic augmentation which would lay the groundwork for a litany of other programs and platforms, including future SPARTAN generations. Its patronage also saw the funding of a number of prototype armor, weapon, and equipment systems, many of which were the foundation for many a radical improvement in humanity's arsenal.
==Origins==
The enigmatic agent known as simply Codename: CALIFORNIA on any and all accessible records had dabbled in the realm of supersoldier projects since the inception of the return in the late 2400s. Though connected to all manner of development project's and programs, his codename was most often found in mentions for programs such as RED STAR, BLACK KNIFE, GOLIATH, and eventually SPARTAN-II. But, when both SPARTAN-II and it's sister program were left to civilians, CALIFORNIA took offense. Believing that even with their cold indifference, Calvin Roe and Catherine Halsey alike lacked the military perspective needed to truly forge the UNSC's tip of the spear. And so, CALIFORNIA called in many of his numerable favors, and made his pitch to the CINCONI herself.
To Parangosky he presented not only his outlook and doubts in regards to the SPARTAN program, but also his own ideas and research for a separate initiative. Though the proposed program would be more financially taxing and yield fewer combatants than either SPARTAN program, CALIFORNIA's widespread influence and power within ONI itself made allowing his initiative to progress the easiest and most viable route. In 2517, just as children began to be abducted from their homes to be trained as Spartans, the JAVELIN Project began.
Sourcing genetic material from persons of any age meeting the same genetic parameters used for SPARTAN-II, CALIFORNIA saw to it that the gathered samples were used to create embryos that would birth children with both halves of their genetic code being fully viable. After an initial volley of cellular modifications, these embryos were unknowingly planted in thirty four different women across human space, who had been seeking invitro fertilization treatment but initially lacked the funds to do so. Disguised as a philanthropic effort, dozens of couples would genuinely receive the gift they were offered, but for those thirty four, such would not be the case.
Of the embryos implanted, five would result in miscarriage before birth, two would die in birth and claim the lives of their mother with them, and one would be accidentally terminated in as the result of a freak traffic accident. The remaining twenty six, when born, would find themselves replaced much like their SPARTAN peers, with flash-clones who would inevitably waste away and die, whilst the children would be rushed away to Tanuab III at the remote ONI outpost on the planet simply designated 'Crucible'. Once arrived, the children would be raised in a controlled environment and subjected to a battery of early enhancements meant to accelerate growth and promote desired traits, though said process would lead to the death of another candidate following a poor reaction to a routine injection when the subject was three.
At the age of four, the subjects would begin their training in earnest.
==Training==
In 2521, the JAVELIN candidates, designated simply as JAVELINs one through twenty five would begin the harshest training course that CALIFORNIA and his litany of support personnel could conceive of. Having used the four years of the children's growth to observe and tweak the training course's being undertaken by both Halsey and Roe's programs, the harsh regimen would be made harsher, while unnecessary curriculum would be cut away. Classroom works was strictly limited to subjects with practical field applications, exchanging histories for studies of formations and simulation exercises, but more often that not, the candidates were simply kept in the field.
This espionage against Section III's other projects had been far from unnoticed though. CALIFORNIA's ambition in regards to the MJOLNIR armor nearly was his undoing, when one of his agents attempted to steal a more recent prototype from the SPARTAN-II training facility on Reach, only to be apprehended and interrogated. Whilst the loss of the agent, and the armor, was devastating, the harshest consequence came in the form of the wrath of Dr. Catherine Halsey. Now aware of the existence of JAVELIN, she made sure that Admiral Parangosky made acquisition of assets and personnel for the program a nightmare, in addition to being granted access to JAVELIN's hypothetical augmentation procedures, though she found them rather unremarkable. 
Routinely the children would be left in the mountain ranges of Tanuab III, miles away from the remote base, with little instruction other than to survive. At first, their opposition would be instructors, ones well aware they were combatting children and hesitant to do them harm. Then would come those with less reservations, the occasional private military contractor, and eventually a series of convicted criminals. Two candidates would be slain in these exercises over the years, but the prison population for violent offenders in the nearby area had plummeted dramatically by the 2525. 
Rather than resort to testing chimpanzees, augmentations for the JAVELINs would also be tested upon many of these prisoners in full view of the children, firstly to ready them for what was to come, and more morbidly, to nullify their reaction to human suffering. Routinely beaten, and forced to commit serious acts of violence upon others before they broke the age of ten, CALIFORNIA was adamant in his insistence that they did not need to be anything more than weapons, and that weapons did not feel.
Unlike SPARTAN-II and SIGMA, JAVELIN lacked a central command figure beyond CALIFORNIA himself, who instead utilized a rotating roster of DI's from various units and security firms trusted by the agent. Though he alleged this was to further strengthen the bonds between the JAVELIN's and their respective teams, many suspected CALIFORNIA was instead intent on ensuring that the only bond of loyalty the soldiers formed was to him alone.
The training regimen of the JAVELINs would alter radically in 2526 when word of the Covenant finally broke to the program, and the focus of the project shifted from counterinsurgency to all out warfare against the new alien threat. Exploiting his connections once more, CALIFORNIA had materials scavenged from the front lines returned to Tanuab, allowing his candidates to further familiarize themselves with the strange technology. In addition to new technology, word from classified reports put the exploits of the recently graduated SPARTANs into CALIFORNIA's hands. As he scrambled to reshape the training of his soldiers, he also worked to alter their planned enhancements, and saw about artificially inducing rapid puberty within the children in order to field them more rapidly.
The change in training was not an easy process, and the alien weapons recovered were unfamiliar to all involved, and lead to the death of a candidate, with an additional trainee becoming irreversibly crippled in the same incident. Tensions between the candidates and their training staff as a result of the rapid changes in hormones also would lead to a number of fatalities. The worst incident came with the death of two more trainees and fifty-five instructors after an incident in which both acquired weapons with live ammunition and attacked a group of instructors who had grievously beaten one of their peers. The slew of incidents began to draw notice, and CALIFORNIA, receiving increasing pressure from his allies and Parangosky alike, resorted to accelerate his timescale, especially after the aforementioned incident required the activation of CALIFORNIA's personal asset.
In 2529, two years prior to his initial planned date, CALIFORNIA subjected fifteen of the twenty surviving candidates, the lowest performers of the class, to their augmentations. Of the group, nine would survive the process unscathed, with the rest dead or horrendously maimed. With the results being exceedingly more positive than expected, CALIFORNIA was optimistic. Tweaking the enhancements based on the results of the first batch, the remaining five would be augmented weeks later, with a bevy of additional cybernetic and chemical enhancements added to the process in hopes of delivering on the promise of supersoldiers superior to SPARTANs, instead it killed them all, leaving CALIFORNIA only with his nine. 
The survivors were divided into three teams: Dogwood, Oak, and Pine. Shortly thereafter they would be outfitted with sets of ATGEIR-class Javelin Combat Suits. The armor, only operational thanks to a cooperative effort between JAVELIN and the Epimetheus Programme, would allow the JAVELIN's a fighting chance against the alien hegemony, one they would not waste. 
==Field Activity==
==Personnel==
==Equipment==
===Armor===
====ATGEIR-class Javelin Combat Suit====
The bastard child of CALIFORNIA and his team's own personal designs, and an incredibly early iteration of the MJOLNIR Mark IV, ATGEIR was an almost wholly inferior armor system, even with the improvements made as a result of their cooperation with Epimetheus. The ATGEIR suit issued to JAVELIN teams did not feature an internal reactor, and instead required a bulky external power pack, which while effectively protected from kinetics, proved especially vulnerable plasma. The armor was not without its strengths though, the increased power output by the suits supply allowed its wearers to force multiplying circuits to operate at a higher level than its counterparts. Lacking in the variety of platforms afforded to the MJOLNIR platform, efforts were quickly made to make the two systems compatible, and by 2532 the systems were almost entirely cross-compatible.
Host to a number of experimental armor systems either rejected by or not yet fully approved for MJONLIR development, the Materials Groups saw the ATGEIR suits as more testbed than a proper battlesuit. Following the Battle of Juniper IX, in which all of Pine Team was killed in action due to various failures in the ATGEIR suit, primarily its exposed reactor pack, the decision was made to outfit the remaining JAVELINs with MJOLNIR of their own.
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====ATGEIR-class Javelin Combat Suit Mark II====
==Associated Projects==
Category:Biological augmentation programs
Category:Office of Naval Intelligence