Microsoft has recently announced that it had just officially won a deal to supply the US Army with AR or augmented reality headsets. These upcoming headsets are reportedly going to be based on the company's HoloLens product and also backed up by the Azure cloud computing services.
Microsoft AR Headset Contract with the US Army
The contact could reportedly be worth all the way up to $21.88 billion over the course of 10 years according to a Microsoft spokesman's statement to Reuters. It was also said that over the course of the past two years, Microsoft has actually been working with the US Army on the new prototyping phase of what would be called the IVAS or the Integrated Visual Augmentation System.
According to the story by The Star, the company noted on Wednesday that the US Army had actually moved into the official production phase of this project. Alex Kipman, a Microsoft Technical Fellow, released a blog post detailing that the headsets are actually designed to deliver a more enhanced situational awareness which would then enable information sharing and also decision making in a whole lot of scenarios.
Microsoft AR Headset Manufacturing
The headset will reportedly be manufactured over in the United States according to the statement of a Microsoft spokesperson to Reuters. Microsoft was also reportedly in line to win another huge deal aside from the $21.9 billion deal with the United States Army. This deal could potentially bring Microsoft another few billions.
Microsoft was reportedly in line to win the massive $10 billion JEDI cloud computing contract with none other than the Pentagon. However, the whole contract still remains in dispute in a certain lawsuit that was filed by Amazon.com. The Pentagon officials then noted to the US lawmakers back in February that the massive Defense Department might actually jettison the contract if the whole dispute would linger in the courts.
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Microsoft Deals with US Army
After Microsoft had previously announced another massive $480 million contract back in 2018 in order to supply prototypes to the United Army. There were apparently at least 94 workers that had petitioned against the company's decision in a bid to cancel the deal and also stop developing any and even all types of weapons technology.
On Wednesday, the Microsoft worker's group on Twitter posted that they would much rather see Microsoft used today in order to stand up for Transgender people all around the world on the Transgender Day of Visibility instead of actually building weapons of war. Microsoft hasn't really given any response regarding the views of its workers in response to the recent tweet.
On the Microsoft blog post, the company noted that they appreciate the partnership that they have with the official US Army and are also thankful for their continued trust in the company as they transition IVAS from its prototyping to the rapid fielding.
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Written by Urian Buenconsejo
