Microsoft Wins $480 Million Military Contract To Bring HoloLens To Battlefield (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft has won a $480 million contract to develop an augmented reality system for use in combat and military training for the U.S. Army. Called Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), formerly Heads Up Display (HUD) 3.0, the goal of the project is to develop a headset that gives soldiers -- both in training and in combat -- an increase in "Lethality, Mobility, and Situational Awareness." The ambitions for the project are high. Authorities want to develop a system with a goggle or visor form factor -- nothing mounted on a helmet -- with an integrated 3D display, digital cameras, ballistic laser, and hearing protection. The system should provide remote viewing of weapon sights to enable low risk, rapid target acquisition, perform automated or assisted target acquisition, integrate both thermal and night vision cameras, track soldier vitals such as heart and breathing rates, and detect concussions. Over the course of IVAS's development, the military will order an initial run of 2,550 prototypes, with follow-on production possibly in excess of 100,000 devices.

Comments

Sad day for the military

[Order_66]

Missile ready 3...2....1.....(windows needs to reboot to install updates) WTF!!?!

Fallout

[Thyamine]

Why does this make me immediately think of the VATS system?

digitalpeace.microsoft.com

[ffkom]

Funny, how at the very same time, Microsoft starts a "petition for digital peace": https://digitalpeace.microsoft...

What they actually want to say is: "Cyber-war should be waged only be the US institutions that we deliver to. We do not want you to compete."

Re:digitalpeace.microsoft.com

[rtb61]

Yeah it called PR=B$ advertising to create an image. Yeah everyone hates M$ because they are a pack of privacy invasive control freak dickheads who demand to be able to install software on your computer any time they want to and who use the retail market as crash test dummies for the corporate licences because of course they pay penalties for downtime for corporate losses and well, the retail suckers, they just laugh at as they watch them masturbating, really sick stuff.

So now M$ supports peace, whilst developing warfare technology, all so fucking lame and all so typical M$ just full of shite, always has been and always will be.

BSOD

[DuroSoft]

Now we can have a literal blue screen of death

Well there's a good use for my tax dollars

[rsilvergun]

Half a billion gone just like that and we still don't have a single credible threat to our military. We've got 19 air craft carriers. China has 1. That they got from Russia if memory serves. Oh wait, they've got two now. Woopee. Meanwhile I don't have reliable access to medicine.

BSOD

[BobFulton]

BSOD sort of takes on new meaning here.

My literal reaction to reading the headline

[TheDarkener]

"Oh...............fuck."

(I live in the U.S.)

I did

[rsilvergun]

and it had nothing to do with taking care of old people and everything to do with bloody laws that prevent us from negotiating drug prices.

Oh, and for my $1 trillion I get something (the old and poor taken care of). For the $600 billion (that we know of) we spent on the army last year all I got was a news story about us dropping a $21 million dollar bomb on some goat herders with old Russian AK47s. Sad thing is that when our president ordered it his poll numbers shot up. I suppose that's from guys like you?

Seriously, this isn't defense. It's empire. But I don't even get cheap gas for all that empire building. Screw war. It's a bad deal for everyone but the folks at the top pulling our strings and lying about bone spurs.

I Agree

[kackle]

If we had tight borders (including kicking out those who didn't belong), we probably wouldn't have spent this money on these dead end "wars", as 9/11 could have been prevented.

Is that a Dog Whistle?

[rsilvergun]

I know it's a faux pas to accuse folks of racism, but IIRC the 9/11 hijackers were here legally and we knew they were preparing a terrorist attack. Our illustrious police forces decided to "let the fish swim" so to speak. Then it came time for Bush Jr to be re-elected and he'd fucked up pretty bad so he dragged us into war with Iraq to get re-elected. Don't forget, the two countries we went to war with (and the 6 we added later) did not attack us. The hijackers were Saudis, but they were carefully escorted out of the country post 9/11 by Bush Jr...

Seriously, kick all the Mexicans you want out of the country. They're not committing acts of terror. Tight borders won't fix anything. Unless by "tight borders" you really mean "White Christians only". In which case say so.