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Soldiers wearing the IVAS system, a modified version of the HoloLens 2.
The American army
The Pentagon has announced that Microsoft has won a contract to build more than 120,000 custom HoloLens augmented reality headsets for the US military. The contract could be worth as much as $ 21.88 billion over 10 years, a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC on Wednesday.
Microsoft shares rose after the announcement.
The deal shows that Microsoft can generate significant revenue from a futuristic product resulting from years of research, beyond key areas such as operating systems and productivity software.
It follows a $ 480 million contract Microsoft received to give the military prototypes of the Integrated Augmented Visual System, or IVAS, in 2018. The new deal will involve the delivery of production versions.
The standard HoloLens, which costs $ 3,500, allows users to see holograms overlaid on their real-life environments and interact using hand and voice gestures. An IVAS prototype that a CNBC reporter tried out in 2019 displayed a map and compass and had thermal imaging to reveal people in the dark. The system could also show the purpose of a weapon.
“The IVAS headset, based on HoloLens and complemented by Microsoft Azure cloud services, provides a platform that will keep soldiers safe and more efficient,” wrote Alex Kipman, technician at Microsoft and the person who introduced HoloLens. in 2015. in a blog post. “The program provides enhanced situational awareness, enabling information sharing and decision making in a variety of scenarios.”
The helmet allows soldiers to fight, rehearse and train in a single system, the military said in a statement. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The deal makes Microsoft a bigger technology provider for the US military. In 2019, Microsoft was awarded a contract to provide cloud services to the Department of Defense, beating the market leader in public cloud Amazon. Amazon has challenged the contract, which could be worth up to $ 10 billion, in federal court.
Some Microsoft employees have asked the company to suspend its submission for the cloud contract, and similarly, a group of employees. called Microsoft to cancel the HoloLens contract. “We have not signed up to develop weapons, and we are demanding a say in how our work is used,” employees wrote in an open letter regarding the HoloLens contract.
Days later, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella defended the military’s augmented reality project, telling CNN that “we have made a policy decision that we are not going to deny technology to institutions that we elected in democracies to protect the freedoms we enjoy “. The military, meanwhile, has suggested that augmented reality technology could help soldiers target enemies and prevent the slaughter of civilians.
– CNBC’s Amanda Macias contributed to this report.
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