Anduril takes over military headset project from Microsoft, Palmer Luckey envisions "technomancer" soldiers

What just happened? Microsoft's troubled mixed-reality headset project for the US Army has come to an end. The Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) program is being taken over by Anduril, founded by the same man who founded Oculus VR and designed the Oculus Rift, Palmer Luckey, who has ambitious plans for the initiative: he wants to "turn warfighters into technomancers."

The defense-tech startup still needs approval from the Department of Defense before the agreement is confirmed. Based on a post on his personal blog, Luckey appears confident that the deal will be approved.

"For me, this announcement is deeply personal," Luckey wrote. "Since my pre-Oculus days as a teenager who had the opportunity to do a tiny bit of work on the Army's BRAVEMIND project, I've believed there would be a headset on every soldier long before there is a headset on every civilian."

The IVAS units combine high-resolution night, thermal, and soldier-borne sensors into a heads-up display. They use augmented reality to provide wearers with real-time battlefield information, including being able to identify drones.

"Tactical heads-up-displays that turn warfighters into technomancers and pair us with weaponized robotics were one of the products in the original Anduril pitch deck for a reason," Luckey wrote. "The past eight years we have spent building Lattice have put Anduril in a position to make this type of thing actually useful in the way military strategists and technologists have long dreamed of, ever since Robert Heinlein's 1959 novel Starship Troopers."

The current IVAS is based on the Microsoft HoloLens headset. The company discontinued Hololens 2 production late last year. With it handing over the Army version to Anduril, Microsoft has confirmed to The Verge that it is leaving the hardware development side and shifting its focus to cloud and AI tech, "which will serve as the foundation for IVAS as a situational awareness platform."

Back in 2018, Microsoft began prototyping the IVAS augmented reality glasses and was awarded a $480 million contract by the Army for 100,000 units. The initial agreement was expanded in March 2021 when Microsoft secured a 10-year contract worth nearly $22 billion to build more than 120,000 headsets.

The project has faced significant challenges from the outset. Initially set for a fiscal year 2021 rollout, the Army's IVAS goggles were delayed until 2022, though military officials insisted they remained committed to the deal. However, concerns soon mounted.

In April 2022, the Department of Defense warned that the large-scale purchase could be a waste of taxpayer money. Later that year, an Army tester raised alarms about the headsets' light emission, which could expose soldiers' positions to enemy forces.

Other issues emerged, including restricted peripheral vision, headaches, eye strain, and nausea – symptoms reported by 80% of testers within three hours of use. The headsets also failed to perform essential functions, further diminishing confidence in the project. In response, Congress rejected the Army's $400 million request to purchase 6,900 units in 2023, instead allocating just $40 million for Microsoft to develop an improved version.