Microsoft has won a contract with the United States Military to supply the US Army with more than 120,000 custom-augmented reality headsets. The deal is estimated to be worth up to $22.9 billion over 10 years.
The deal follows a previous contract between the military and Microsoft made in 2018 that gave Microsoft $480 million for developing a prototype technology called the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS). The technology is based on Microsoft’s HoloLens “mixed-reality” headsets and Azure Cloud Service technologies. The new deal involves the manufacturing of the final version of the IVAS headsets that soldiers will use. Microsoft demoed an early version of the HoloLens headsets at E3 2015, though the company never pursued achieving mainstream commercial success with the product.
The US Army said that the IVAS headsets will be used to train soldiers inside a single platform. The Army also revealed that the headsets capabilities, which include night, thermal, and “soldier-borne” sensors integrated into a heads up display that gives soldiers enhanced situational awareness. The contract includes a five-year base period followed by another option five-year period, according to CNBC. The 120,000 headsets will be delivered throughout the 10-year period.
Microsoft has a history working for the military. In 2019, the tech giant won a contract to provide an advanced cloud service technology called JEDI to the Defense Department, beating out competitor Amazon in the process. Amazon is now challenging the contract, which is estimated to be worth $10 billion, in federal court. The Army said that its partnership with Microsoft demonstrates that the Defense Department can partner with a private company to create new technology “in the interest of national security.”
Microsoft’s deals with the military has started to cause problems among the company’s employees, some of whom asked Microsoft to back away from the cloud service JEDI contract. More recently, a group of Microsoft employees wrote an open letter asking the company to hold off on the IVAS HoloLens contract. The letter states, “We did not sign up to develop weapons, and we demand a say in how our work is used.”
A few days after the letter was released, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella defended the company’s military contracts, arguing that Microsoft decided to not “withhold” technology from democratic institutions. Last year, Nadella said that Microsoft was focused on creating gaming technology.
Microsoft recently revealed it's Mesh AR technology, a mixed-reality application that allows holographic avatars to interact with physical objects. A number of other tech companies are also working to develop AR technology, including Facebook, Snap, and Qualcomm.
Source: CNBC