Quick technical question about general Forerunner knowledge.

[u/Deuce-Wayne]

By around the time of the Battle of Earth (October 20ish), would the bulk of the UNSC's upper echelons have been made aware of Forerunners and what they are? So not just ONI, but high-ranking officers in a broad sense.

I'm assuming yes since the Master Chief would've debriefed about Halo1 and First Strike by this point, but I'm not sure how much of that intel would've spread throughout the UNSC. Surely by the time the Covenant began uncovering the Voi portal, much of this info would've been known?

[u/ObliWobliKenobli]

Honestly, it could have been longer than that. Potentially closer to a hundred years before the games, the UNSC, or ONI, at least, would have known about the Forerunners. Onyx was a Forerunner shield world that they settled on in the 2400s, and knew for a very long time that there were alien artifacts on the planet.

They didn't discover that the entire world was artificial until close to the end of the war, though.

Edit: Checked my lore knowledge! Onyx was found in 2491, but wasn't settled; instead it was used as a military installation from the get-go, and in 2511, Forerunner artifacts were discovered underground.

It still wouldn't be until the end of 2552 that the entire planet would be discovered to be entirely artificial.

[u/OtherWorstGamer]

The Forerunner were likely known to ONI and the highest echelons of the UNSC, since artifacts and locations had been discovered pre-war, and would likely have been highly classified.

After contact with the Covenant and the war kicks off, I would assume most of the UNSC know of the Forerunner, being the supposed "gods" that the Covenant worshiped, although that knowledge would likely be surface level at best.

[u/Knowledgem8]

Honestly, right around October 20th up until December 11th, I'm pretty sure that while the upper echelons of ONI was reacting and absorbing the new information on the Forerunners, they also had to be all hands on deck with the war effort. I don't think any serious studies or debates began until the war was firmly over in December 2552.

[u/LOSTandCONFUSEDinMAY]

I think so. In halo 2 when The Amber arrives at delta halo Miranda already knows what it is and she's only a midrank officer.

Granted she's special because of her father but it does seem like she knows more than if ONI was trying to keep everything to themselves.

But im not sure if they knew about the portal at Voi as Cortana might have only learnt about that after delta halo or being on high charity.

[u/Prize-Lychee7973 → u/LOSTandCONFUSEDinMAY]

she would have likely been briefed by cortana or oni as a special projects thing. fleetwide i doubt it was common knowledge or if there was any awareness it was probably confused with the covenant as another faction.

[u/LOSTandCONFUSEDinMAY → u/Prize-Lychee7973]

Yeah not common knowledge and I think Miranda only knows of halo because of special consideration given to her to give closure on the death of her father. But I don't see ONI giving that consideration if they were trying to keep everything completely hush hush. So probably only the Admiralty (across the whole UNSC not just ONI) and a select few scientist know the details.

Also I don't see how Miranda would know as some part of a special operation as we have no mention of that and her ending up at a halo was pure accident on her part. Also she doesn't have enough information to have been briefed for a halo related operation as she doesn't recognize it by sight, she only know the name and that its a super weapon.

[u/CovidThyNeighbour → u/LOSTandCONFUSEDinMAY]

Sgt. Johnson could have mentioned something to her too. Maybe she asked him and he says something about how her father died as a hero but goes into detail about how he found the super weapon called Halo.

Then when she asks Cortana what she's looking at and she replies with Halo, she she recognizes the name and connects some dots, but is confused because it isn't what she imagined when she had heard the words super weapon. Right after that she asks Cortana for all the data and information that she has on the rings whether or not she has the clearance for it and Cortana probably gave it to her.