Army Makes Gargantuan Bet On New Augmented Reality Goggles For Its Soldiers
Augmented reality headsets could give individual Army soldiers unprecedented situational awareness and immediate access to critical information.
By Joseph Trevithick April 1, 2021
The War Zone
The U.S. Army recently awarded a massive contract, which could ultimately be worth close to $22 billion over the next decade, to Microsoft for the production of new augmented reality vision systems. These helmet-mounted systems feature advanced sensor fusion capabilities, similar to those found on the latest generations of night vision and other image-enhancing optics. In addition, they will have the ability to project a wide array of data piped in from various sources, including off-board platforms, providing improved situational awareness and other potentially game-changing benefits to troops in the field.
The Army announced the deal for production of what it calls the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) on March 31, 2021, but said that it had actually been signed five days earlier. The contract includes "a five year Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ)-like ordering period" and "five one-year options for CLS [contractor logistics support]," with "a potential agreement ceiling of $21.88B," the service told Breaking Defense.
US Army
A soldier wears an Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) headset during an experiment in 2020.
It's not clear how many IVAS units the Army might eventually buy, but it has talked about purchases of as many as 40,000 of these systems in the past. The U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. special operations forces might also piggyback onto those
orders in the future.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40023/army-makes-gargantuan-bet-on-new-augmented-reality-goggles-for-its-soldiers
