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Microsoft Wins US Army Contract for Augmented-Reality Headsets, Worth Up To $21.9 Billion Over 10 Years (cnbc.com) 55

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
The Pentagon announced that Microsoft has won a contract to build more than 120,000 custom HoloLens augmented-reality headsets for the U.S. Army. The contract could be worth up to $21.88 billion over 10 years, a Microsoft spokesperson said. From a report: The deal shows Microsoft can generate meaningful revenue from a futuristic product resulting from years of research, beyond core areas such as operating systems and productivity software. It follows a $480 million contract Microsoft received to give the Army prototypes of the Integrated Visual Augmented System, or IVAS, in 2018. The new deal will involve providing production versions.

The standard-issue HoloLens, which costs $3,500, enables people to see holograms overlaid over their actual environments and interact using hand and voice gestures. An IVAS prototype that a CNBC reporter tried out in 2019 displayed a map and a compass and had thermal imaging to reveal people in the dark. The system could also show the aim for a weapon. "The IVAS headset, based on HoloLens and augmented by Microsoft Azure cloud services, delivers a platform that will keep soldiers safer and make them more effective," Alex Kipman, a technical fellow at Microsoft and the person who introduced the HoloLens in 2015, wrote in a blog post. "The program delivers enhanced situational awareness, enabling information sharing and decision-making in a variety of scenarios."
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Microsoft Wins US Army Contract for Augmented-Reality Headsets, Worth Up To $21.9 Billion Over 10 Years More

Microsoft Wins US Army Contract for Augmented-Reality Headsets, Worth Up To $21.9 Billion Over 10 Years

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  • It would've cost even more (Score:5, Funny)

    by tomhath ( 637240 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @02:34PM (#61221836)
    But Microsoft will use it to display personalized advertising to soldiers in the field.
    • Hell, why don't they use the ones the folks in congress are using that seem to think spending us into oblivion, combined with raising taxes during a pandemic is a good idea?

      I mean, they MUST be using some heavy duty augmented headsets for that to look real.

    • That will work out great, when they are facing the enemy they can be interrupted for a weapons ad. "Looks like you missed. Next time, try a bazooka .. 50% off if you call right now!"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 )
      Girls in your area are looking to meet!

  • Soldiers don't need even more shit to break when it counts.

    Now get on with your BSOD jokes.

  • What a huge waste of money!! The hololens is terrible. Judging by the Hololens debacle, Microsoft doesn't know anything about VR or how to build a headset. It weighs a ton and the field of view is pathetic. I know from experience that trying to use it for an extended period is torture. My God, our poor troops .. will they have to use it? Doesn't it violate the Geneva Convention, maybe that can be used to legally get out of this deal? Anyway, at least it's the Army paying for it .. it's not like it's coming

    • Re:Big waste of money!! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Actually, I do RTFA ( 1058596 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @03:26PM (#61222060)

      I love the hololens. It's great!

      The FOV is a smaller than I would like in v1, but they should be widening in the subsequent versions. The weight is a little annoying, but I think it's overstated. Plus, the Army is moving to lighter helmets. But you missed the point. The real win isn't the AR capabilities - it's the sensor capabilities. The hololens has ToF sensors 360 around the helmet, which should help a hell of a lot. Who cares if the graphics are low fidelity if it shows useful information in that area.

      My hope is that this will lead to more surplus hololenses, because unlike most tech, they are not aging onto ebay at reasonable prices.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by e3m4n ( 947977 )
        Are these going on those exoskeleton suits theyve been working on? Is this the armys first round of Power Armor?

  • Perhaps the VR helmets will be used for this [wikipedia.org]?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      The main use of helmets is for poorly intellectually equipped soldiers to be able to user drones more readily. So flying drone supplies information feed to the soldier, problem is, the M$ version of the glasses is crap, so old fashioned, should be

  • 200k per lense? (Score:3)

    by idontusenumbers ( 1367883 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @03:03PM (#61221956)

    That seems to come out to nearly $200,000 per hololense. Yikes.

    • No, the $22 billion includes a decade of cloud services, plus the estimated follow on when defense contractors start building hololens apps.

      • Cloud services? Army? WTF?

        Corporal: Major, go see what's happening over there!
        Major: I can't sir, my hololens' connection is lagging!

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by bodog ( 231448 )

          yeah, the DoD is surprising agile, see Platform One as an example. This as another.. https://www.popularmechanics.c... [popularmechanics.com]

        • First things first, Majors are many rungs higher than corporal on the rank hierarchy. Second, it's probably to sync prior to/after battles. Not real-time (except for during training when it can feed in false information.)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Hodr ( 219920 )

          Almost certainly going to be used in a logistics and/or maintenance capacity. I.E. "find the piece of gear that looks like this", "initiate the BIT like so", "report status and ship to the following adress", "highlight this field to review crating and shipping instructions".

      • No, the $22 billion includes a decade of cloud services, plus the estimated follow on when defense contractors start building hololens apps.

        Yes.. This effectively puts the price at about $183,000 / each. They're getting 120,000 units and, all together, the price tag is going to be $22 billion. Yes?

        Okay, it's for a decade. That's $18,300 / each per YEAR of total MS cost.

        So.. What the hell do you mean by "No"?

        • I mean you're assuming the total contract value is just for the hololenses. It's not. It's for support and long-term services too. You cannot just amertorize that cost over all the hololenses and end up with something reasonable, anymore than you can talk about a computer's cost over 10 years including all the license costs and all the costs of Google's servers feeding you ads, etc.

          • I mean you're assuming the total contract value is just for the hololenses. It's not. It's for support and long-term services too. You cannot just amertorize that cost over all the hololenses and end up with something reasonable, anymore than you can talk about a computer's cost over 10 years including all the license costs and all the costs of Google's servers feeding you ads, etc.

            Well... You're correct in the total sense of the word, but we, the taxpayers, are effectively going to be paying $183,000 per holo-lense over a 10-year period.

            6 of one, half dozen of the other. Dunno why the hell you brought up ads tho.. That's not a cost that the purchaser of a computer incurs. It would seem to me that the Pentagon is going to incur the TOTAL cost of this system. And your computer analogy is flawed too. I need not buy a single license to use my computer. In fact, I don't. (100% OSS)

            S

            • You don't have to buy a licenses But the government decided not to. People don't talk about the price of a computer including all their license costs and the costs of the ads they see. That's just not how vocabulary works. But those are counted as revenue for the company supplying them. When you buy a Pixel phone, Google figures the value of the sale including the continuing revenue from the App store and the expected cut of ad revenue going forward. That's why phones are cheap but Google makes so muc

  • I wonder how much of US tech industry is not involved with profit through bloodshed?

    • A huge portion of the wealth and financial infrastructure of US is built on war profiteering during WW1. That we're still doing the same shit 100 years later should come as no shock, war and war fighting technology is a major component of American culture.

      If you want to achieve world peace, you'll have to change the hearts and minds of millions of American voters first.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tomhath ( 637240 )
        You live in a fantasy world. Remind me again why the US got involved in WWI. And why it was such a good idea to cut military spending before WWII.

        • You live in a fantasy world. Remind me again why the US got involved in WWI. And why it was such a good idea to cut military spending before WWII.

          You are the one living in a fantasy world. Remind me again exactly what industry isn't affected by the 21st Century multi-trillion-dollar Military Industrial Complex.

          Eisenhower was THE prophet when it came to this, and he was 110% right. Still stands true today. Sixty years later.

        • The US's military force during WW1 was not a significant factor in the war. The US's banking and industry made it possible for much of Europe to continue the fight much longer. The payment of war debt was a huge injection into the US economy and marked a big shift in the world's markets away from London and towards New York.

          The problem we face now is an attitude of American exceptionalism, where people live in a fantasy that we're somehow owed our position in the world and we could never lose it. Long term

    • Well, another way to look at it is that Microsoft is ripping us off so bad we won't have money for war.

    • Every country deals in bloodshed, get off your high horse

      • Not all, and not at the same scale.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        We spend more on our uniquely ineffective war machine than the next eight countries combined, six of whom are allies. We could reduce spending by 70% and still be the world's largest spender on war toys. And what do we get? The Pentagram hasn't won an actual war since 1945, and after spending close to a trillion dollars in Afghanistan they don't even control the suburbs of Kabul where the "enemy" is a bunch of goat herders armed with 20 year old Kalashnikovs who sometimes use literal smoke signals for co

  • My Company Was Raving About Hololens (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @03:14PM (#61222020) Journal
    I was skeptical about Hololens, but when travel was shutdown due to COVID-19, a lot of people in my company started raving about it. Engineers were able to show technicians at manufacturing plants how to perform tasks that would have been impossible otherwise. There is a business case that the device easily pays for itself in travel costs.

  • It Gives New Meaning... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by organgtool ( 966989 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @03:34PM (#61222096)
    It gives new meaning to the Blue Screen of Death
  • The employees at Microsoft will complain and they will drop it.

  • Help, I cannot see (Score:4, Funny)

    by gtall ( 79522 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @03:50PM (#61222146)

    GI Joe: First Sargent, there's something wrong with my vision, all I see is blue.

    First S: You are supposed to be working though the training exercise, stop looking at the blue.

    GI Joe: It's blue everywhere I look.

    First S: Uh-oh. Take that contraption off.

    GI Joe: Ah, that's better now I can see.

    First S: See the little red button there underneath, press that and put the goggles back on.

    GI Joe: I've pressed the button. What does "Unrecognized Fault: Please Contact Viewer Support" mean.

    First S: It means if you contact support, they'll explain why the U.S. Army just wasted $20 Billion.

    GI Joe: So I don't have to complete the exercise?

    First S: No, you are excused. Now where's that Microsoft Representative? It's time for the Live Fire Drill.

  • The military using Microsoft is one of the dumbest, most irresponsible ideas anyone could ever generate.

    Am I the only one who anticipates soldiers being hacked in the field, communications and authentication being corrupted and the entire US fighting force rendered inert by some of the most appallingly poor software engineering in the industry?

    • Then who do you think would be a better company? Who would be a better choice to integrate a backend, to an edge, to a front service environment? Most traditional contractors who can will subcontract most of it thus making support very complex and the bill 5 times as much at least....
  • Or here we go again.

  • "It looks like you are trying to lay waste to your enemies.... Would you like some help with that?"

  • Clippy (Score:2)

    by PPH ( 736903 )

    "It looks like you are trying to put down an insurgency. Do you need some help with that?"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      MS would probably give better advice on that than Blackwater or Triple Canopy have done so far. Trillion dollars in Afghanistan and they still don't even control the suburbs of Kabul.

  • How much of this $21.9 will be donated to Capitol Hill and will the VR headset work as well as the rest of Microsoft offerings.

    Solar Winds attack explained [csoonline.com]

  • Safer? More effective? How? What do these terms mean in real life?

  • I'm wondering if the old VR lense project which was open source simply morphed into the Holo Headset? I remember a lot of opinions on the VR project and open source inclusion.

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