The U.S. Army has awarded a consortium of Anduril Industries Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc., as well as another team led by Rivet Industries, a competitive prototype contract to produce new combat goggles.
In its statement, the Army did not disclose the total value of the program or how much new equipment it would ultimately purchase. Rivet said its contract was worth US$195 million, while Anduril announced it had received a contract value of US$159 million.
The equipment is designed to help soldiers navigate on the battlefield and incorporates technologies previously developed by Microsoft such as the Integrated Vision Augmentation System (IVAS). The IVAS project has been predicted to cost more than $20 billion over the next decade.
The Army said in an earlier statement to Bloomberg that the new project "inherits the capabilities of IVAS based on a modular approach, while paying more attention to software engineering and system design." Earlier this year, Anduril took over the management of the IVAS project, and the Army also renamed it "Soldier Mission Command System (SBMC)."
The Army said: "The lessons learned during the development of IVAS, as well as observations of changes in current conflict situations, form the basis of SBMC. SBMC will also be equipped with more open and scalable head-mounted display equipment." Previously, the Army has invested $1.36 billion in the IVAS project for years of research and development and the purchase of 500 improved prototypes.
According to Anduril's statement announcing the partnership, Meta is participating for the first time, which also shows a change in the attitude of mainstream technology companies. In the past, most of these companies have avoided cooperation with the military. Andrew Bosworth, chief technology officer of Meta, said in June this year that the trend in Silicon Valley has changed, and it is now more acceptable for technology companies to cooperate with the military.
The contracts were awarded through a streamlined mechanism called Other Transaction Authority (OTA), designed to speed up the delivery of prototypes and respond to long-standing criticism in the defense industry that development cycles are too long.
The increased role of Anduril is also a manifestation of President Trump's push for technology companies to actively participate in the development of weapons systems that were previously dominated by traditional military industrial companies.
Anduril said in a statement that the new system "incorporates 260,000 hours of soldier feedback on the IVAS project and Anduril's own Lattice software to become the basis for the SBMC head-mounted mixed reality system."
Anduril also announced that it will cooperate with head technology companies including Meta, Oakley Standard Issue, Qualcomm, Gentex and other head-mounted technology companies to jointly design and build a new head-mounted mixed reality system for soldiers.
Late last year, Meta approved U.S. government agencies and defense contractors for use of its AI models, giving Meta’s technology a green light in the military and national security fields.
Previously, Meta's "acceptable use policy" prohibited the use of its AI models in any project related to "military, war, nuclear energy or related applications, and espionage." But in order to expand its influence in the public sector and in the AI arms race, Meta decided to make exceptions for U.S. defense agencies and related contractors.