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!!?!

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.

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.