It’s been a long road on Microsoft’s journey to sell Augmented Reality technology to the US military, but it appears the that US Army is set to begin accepting delivery on some of the “high tech combat goggles,” according to a report from Bloomberg.
Word that Microsoft was working with the US Defense Department on a heads up display for US ground forces, known as IVAS, or Integrated Visual Augmentation System, based on work Microsoft has done on the HoloLens and HoloLens 2 augmented reality devices, way back in June of 2021. According to the Bloomberg report, the Army had placed an initial order of 5,000 devices, worth $373 million, with a potential purchase of some 121,000 devices, worth $21.9 billion over ten years. However early tests of the system were problematic, enough so that the program was put on hold last fall.
The Army began testing the devices again this year, and held a largely successful test with a US Army Stryker team last month. After that test, the Army is ready to begin accepting delivery of the first batch of the devices, and “(t)he Army remains confident that the program will succeed,” said Assistant Secretary for Acquisition Douglas Bush as quoted by Bloomberg.
