: On the point of innovation being limited to small groups, is the UNSC not
: also needlessly running the risk of stifling innovation in biotechnology
: by keeping it all under wraps and only applying it to one small group of
: "elite" soldiers, as opposed to distributing parts of the
: augments to other branches for development?

If augmentation has somehow become so easy even a pack of Tier 3 cavemen can do it without a massive industrial base, then yes.

The Spartan branch can somehow afford to armor and augment Jared Miller and Robert Dalton. Stellar soldiers, both of them, and Crimson would have been dead a dozen times over under less capable management. That said, there's not much call for a mission control technician to be an augmented supersoldier. Almost precisely none, in fact.

: Might they even be better off
: in the long run if they declassified some of the data for private
: companies to use in developing weaker publicly available technologies?

Heh. Have you been reading Schlock Mercenary?

Part of the backstory is that the Human government collated all of its ongoing supersoldier programs and realized that, in between the super-healing and trauma-resistant physiology and memory hacks, they could make people functionally immortal... with the minor side effect of turning the human population into a race of nigh-unkillable super soldiers.

If the UNSC was to copyleft and distribute the augmentation process, I can see that turning out pretty well. If colonists could pay for a more robust physiology to survive in harsh environments, I believe they would.

: I'm wondering where the SPI armour has went as well, which could have been
: nice for the ODST to use.

The UNSC could even drop the Infiltration from Semi-Powered Infiltration Armor and it would be a boon to the soldiers. To my knowledge, ODST armor isn't strength-enhancing, and their equipment weighs a lot for an extended hike.

: Instead all the money has either went into the
: S-IVs or the Infinity. The UNSC could have used SPI as a base for
: outfitting the IV's and also several hundred more ODSTs at the same time
: with the spared up funds from not making hundreds of Mjolnir suits, and
: then added to SPI over time to eventually bring it up to the standards of
: Mjolnir as their fabrication techniques improved. Might that have worked
: better?

Doubtlessly.

: Judging from the Great Schism being a two month long affair, there's
: definitely a sense that things are being rushed.

What, the pacing of Escalation didn't tip you off? =P

More seriously, I think the writers are eager to return to the Human-Covenant War-era status quo, with the minor alteration of having the humans be the top dogs. It's disappointing, really. The Spartans may be popular, but the stories about them kicking troopships full of Covenant ass were the weakest in Halo's extended universe.