Congress blocks Army from buying $400 million Microsoft HoloLens headsets
According to a report from Bloomberg, Congress has denied the Army’s request to buy up to 6,900 headsets based on Microsoft’s HoloLens technology. The military was apparently asking for around $400 million — instead, it’s getting around a tenth of that to go toward improving the system, as previous versions reportedly caused “mission-affecting physical impairments,” such as headaches and nausea during tests. According to Mitchell Clark from the Verge, bolding and underlining from Mi-Token staff writer.
The Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) is a HoloLens-derived piece of military augmented-reality equipment that would ideally provide improved sight in low-visibility, and maps, but it has yet to make it out of the testing phases due to nausea and impairment from the equipment.
Lawmakers blocked $360m, and the remaining $40m shifted toward building a better headset, specifically version 1.2. The US Army said last week that it awarded a task order to Microsoft "to develop the 1.2 variant of the [IVAS]" on December 20, a few days prior to congressional passage of the bill.
This process began back in March of 2021, with the Army’s first order of IVAS production of the Hololens headsets based on Microsoft's hololens technology. In total, the Army has wanted to blow as much as $22 billion over 10 years on the program and said it has spent around two per cent of that to date. The aforementioned $40m for development is joined by another $16.5m listed as a "program increase" for the IVAS project in FY 2023.
Microsoft, for its part, appears unconcerned based on what a spokesperson told The Register. "The regular cadence of building and testing IVAS is a critical part of the development process. Ultimately, this cadence will help us refine and improve the technology to ensure it brings unparalleled protection and capabilities to America’s Soldiers," a spokesperson told The Register.
Still unclear, however, is whether the average rank-and-file Private will want to wear the thing [PDF] in the first place. (Last line taken from the last line of the aforementioned Register article)