- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
To everyone that said the SPARTAN I project was a group of voulunteered Marines and special operations members, I salute you. You've got your Halo Universe knowledge squared away.
Just listen to the ILB recordings once more. Jim James, the father of Jan James, was an original SPARTAN I, as was her mother, Gilly. After the UNSC entered a peacetime (way before the Covenant/Human War), they were basically decommissioned. They had a lot of physical augmentation, but nowhere near the level the SPARTAN II (or even SPARTAN III) program had. Because of this, they retained that certain quality that let them remained human (and not cybernetic, like the Master Chief and his Spartans). Therefore, all surviving members were discharged, and allowed to take up normal lives. In addition, all children any of the SPARTAN I's had were shot up with augmentation serums when they were born, should the need arise for another SPARTAN program. I assume they abandoned this idea when the Covie/Human War began, considering most of the SPARTAN "1.1's" were just 17 and 18 years old, and because the SPARTAN II project had previously been started, leading some to suspect that the ONI spooks knew about the Covenant for quite some time prior to the first battle at Harvest with Admiral Cole and the single Covenant Destroyer.
Yeah, I'm a geek...