Though few would bet against Luckey’s expertise within the realm of mixed reality, few observers share his optimism for the IVAS program. They view it, to this point, as an avalanche of failures.
IVAS was first approved in 2018 as an effort to construct state-of-the-art mixed-reality headsets for soldiers. In March 2021, Microsoft was awarded nearly $22 billion over 10 years to guide the project, nevertheless it quickly became mired in delays. Only a 12 months later, a Pentagon audit criticized this system for not properly testing the goggles, saying its decisions “could lead to wasting as much as $21.88 billion in taxpayer funds to field a system that soldiers may not wish to use or use as intended.” The primary two variants of the goggles—of which the military purchased 10,000 units—gave soldiers nausea, neck pain, and eye strain, based on internal documents obtained by Bloomberg.
Such reports have left IVAS on a brief leash with members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which helps determine how much money ought to be spent on this system. In a subcommittee meeting in May, Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican and rating member, expressed frustration at IVAS’s slow pace and high costs, and in July the committee suggested a $200 million cut to this system.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has for years been cutting investments into its HoloLens headset—the hardware on which the IVAS program is predicated—for lack of adoption. In June, Microsoft announced layoffs to its HoloLens teams, suggesting the project is now focused solely on serving the Department of Defense. The corporate received a serious blow in August, when reports revealed that the Army is considering reopening bidding for the contract to oust Microsoft entirely.
That is the catastrophe that Luckey’s stepped into. Anduril’s contribution to the project will likely be Lattice, an AI-powered system that connects the whole lot from drones to radar jammers to surveil, detect objects, and aid in decision-making. Lattice is increasingly becoming Anduril’s flagship offering. It’s a tool that permits soldiers to receive instantaneous information not only from Anduril’s hardware, but in addition from radars, vehicles, sensors, and other equipment not made by Anduril. Now it would be built into the IVAS goggles. “It’s not quite a hive mind, nevertheless it’s definitely a hive eye” is how Luckey described it to me.
PHILIP CHEUNG
Boosted by Lattice, the IVAS program goals to provide a headset that will help soldiers “rapidly discover potential threats and take decisive motion” on the battlefield, based on the Army. If designed well, the device will mechanically sort through countless pieces of data—drone locations, vehicles, intelligence—and flag crucial ones to the wearer in real time.
