The army is assured to hand over control of one of its prominent and historically challenging initiatives, the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), to the emerging weapons manufacturer Anduril.
As announced by founder Palmer Luckey in a blog on Tuesday, the final approval is pending from the Department of Defense (DoD). Initially, the IVAS project was awarded to Microsoft in 2018 to develop AR (augmented reality) headsets for soldiers with the use of a ruggedized version of HoloLens.
The project was originally budgeted at a huge amount of $21.9 billion. Now, Anduril will take the project into its own hands. Although Microsoft is stepping down as the primary contractor, it will remain involved as the cloud service provider.
As stated by Microsoft, the responsibilities of Anduril will include looking over the production, managing the delivery schedules, and advancing both hardware as well as software development.
The original vision for IVAS was to have troops with a heads-up display with capabilities such as thermal sensing. Along with this, features like Tactical Assault Kit Software for mission-critical data and detailed maps were to be included.
Microsoft in September revealed that the Lattice software of Anduril had already been integrated into the IVAS headsets. It enhances them with computer vision AI and other functionalities that allow headsets to detect, track, and classify objects.
However, IVAS has faced a series of persistent challenges. A report from DoD’s inspector in 2022 criticized IVAS for failing to properly meet the needs of the soldiers who would be using the headsets.
The report warned, “Procuring IVAS without attaining user acceptance could result in wasting up to $21.88 billion in taxpayer funds to field a system that soldiers may not want to use, or use as intended.”
Business Journalist
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