Microsoft wins $21.9B contract with U.S. Army to supply AR headsets • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft wins $21.9B contract with U.S. Army to supply AR headsets

#41

Post by peruvian » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 8:17 PM UTC

blunte wrote: post #18

I don't look like a hippie, but I totally subscribe to the idea of "make love, not war". I imagine what the possibilities would be if we funded general non-military projects with the kind of money that goes into the military. Trillions have been spent on wars or war preparation, and of course the net result is worsening for humanity. What if instead that money were spend on helping humanity? Do we really need a confl…

The internet itself is a military project and its pioneers were all either military-employed or had contracts early on, for actual military applications or surveillance. Read Yasha Levine's Surveillance Valley. Unfortunately it seems tech is forever tied with the military industrial complex.

Re: Microsoft wins $21.9B contract with U.S. Army to supply AR headsets

#42

Post by trentnix » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 8:17 PM UTC

high_priest wrote: post #31

blunte wrote: post #18

I don't look like a hippie, but I totally subscribe to the idea of "make love, not war". I imagine what the possibilities would be if we funded general non-military projects with the kind of money that goes into the military. Trillions have been spent on wars or war preparation, and of course the net result is worsening for humanity. What if instead that money were spend on helping humanity? Do we really need a confl…

Life is one big war. Just because you live in a pleasant neighbourhood, doesn't mean there are no malevolent people in the world...

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. - commonly attributed to Orwell

Re: Microsoft wins $21.9B contract with U.S. Army to supply AR headsets

#43

Post by nickff » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 8:18 PM UTC

blunte wrote: post #18

I don't look like a hippie, but I totally subscribe to the idea of "make love, not war". I imagine what the possibilities would be if we funded general non-military projects with the kind of money that goes into the military. Trillions have been spent on wars or war preparation, and of course the net result is worsening for humanity. What if instead that money were spend on helping humanity? Do we really need a confl…

Lots of non-military projects/programs are funded at similar or greater levels than military ones. Look at education, wealth-transfer programs (social security), and healthcare (medicare and medicaid); each of these gets more money than the DoD.

Very expensive science projects (such as JWST @ $10BB) also get funded, though they're often pillaged for either pork or increased welfare spending.

Re: Microsoft wins $21.9B contract with U.S. Army to supply AR headsets

#44

Post by judge2020 » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 8:18 PM UTC

ghostwreck wrote: post #27

This makes me think of some of the battles that play out in Daemon and Freedom [1]. They're able to visualize all other parties in the area mapped by drones in real-time. They fight with massive AI swarms and are able to control the AI bots with hand gestures as they see them on the field, all while cruising around on modified motorcycles. We're in for a wild future. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(novel_se…

More fairly popular pop culture that this might mirror is the Black Mirror episode Men Against Fire where the AR implants are being used to trick their soldiers into thinking regular humans are some mutant creature to make it easier to pull the trigger and kill them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Against_Fire

Re: Microsoft wins $21.9B contract with U.S. Army to supply AR headsets

#45

Post by darepublic » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 8:19 PM UTC

high_priest wrote: post #31

blunte wrote: post #18

I don't look like a hippie, but I totally subscribe to the idea of "make love, not war". I imagine what the possibilities would be if we funded general non-military projects with the kind of money that goes into the military. Trillions have been spent on wars or war preparation, and of course the net result is worsening for humanity. What if instead that money were spend on helping humanity? Do we really need a confl…

Life is one big war. Just because you live in a pleasant neighbourhood, doesn't mean there are no malevolent people in the world...

You can't handle the truth!!!

Re: Microsoft wins $21.9B contract with U.S. Army to supply AR headsets

#46

Post by golemiprague » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 8:19 PM UTC

blunte wrote: post #18

I don't look like a hippie, but I totally subscribe to the idea of "make love, not war". I imagine what the possibilities would be if we funded general non-military projects with the kind of money that goes into the military. Trillions have been spent on wars or war preparation, and of course the net result is worsening for humanity. What if instead that money were spend on helping humanity? Do we really need a confl…

Why do you think not financing an army prevents war or brings love and peace? There is no evidence to that, probably the contrary. We do spend a lot of money on a lot of other things, at the end of the day we need to spend some part of the budget on security. So the question is how much and if there is some objection to this specific spending it should be explained specifically.

Re: Microsoft wins $21.9B contract with U.S. Army to supply AR headsets

#47

Post by harveywi » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 8:19 PM UTC

323454 wrote: post #23

remarkEon wrote: post #3

Anyone work this technology and can talk about it (without breaking whatever NDA of course)? I'm a former infantryman and ... let's just say I'm _extremely_ skeptical of this kind of technology for all but the most niche use-cases (think, AR for the driver in the hole of the truck). Obviously for pilots stuff similar to this has been around for a while, but the article is not really clear about how exactly this would…

From what I've seen the two key use cases are 1) being able to see a "gun's eye" view, enabling you to poke your weapon out of cover and fire without exposing yourself 2) faster friend-foe identification through the AR overlay. Both of those seem like significant upgrades and arguably worth pursuing, but you can be sure a bunch of other nonsense will probably get tacked on that may make it worse than useless (like gi…

Actually, Microsoft's involvement came about when leadership decided that the investment in Clippy needed to be recouped. After some creative brainstorming, it was determined that soldiers needed a heads-up display to track their ammo reserves. Ammo is stored in clips, which is a natural fit for Clippy to keep track of.

Re: Microsoft wins $21.9B contract with U.S. Army to supply AR headsets

#48

Post by Tossrock » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 8:19 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #4

People on the ground never have use for such tech. These deals are all political and the actual equipment arrives by the truckloads and sits unboxed. When people rant about ridiculous military budgets and spending it isn't about cutting soldiers' salaries but shit like this.

US air superiority fighters already include AR in their helmets.

Re: Microsoft wins $21.9B contract with U.S. Army to supply AR headsets

#49

Post by remarkEon » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 8:20 PM UTC

anon_tor_12345 wrote: post #12

paxys wrote: post #4

People on the ground never have use for such tech. These deals are all political and the actual equipment arrives by the truckloads and sits unboxed. When people rant about ridiculous military budgets and spending it isn't about cutting soldiers' salaries but shit like this.

There's a very obvious analogy here that proves you wrong: nvgs

His take is a little cyclical, but it's not wrong necessarily. For every set of PVS-14s there were 3 or 4 little pieces of "tech" that were utterly useless.

Re: Microsoft wins $21.9B contract with U.S. Army to supply AR headsets

#50

Post by bushbaba » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 8:20 PM UTC

blunte wrote: post #18

I don't look like a hippie, but I totally subscribe to the idea of "make love, not war". I imagine what the possibilities would be if we funded general non-military projects with the kind of money that goes into the military. Trillions have been spent on wars or war preparation, and of course the net result is worsening for humanity. What if instead that money were spend on helping humanity? Do we really need a confl…

There are about 300 million US citizens. 21.9 billion split evenly is $73 per person.

And this is a multi year contract.

It’s a lot of money, but not a huge amount divided across the population. This money likely also generates ancillary US jobs so the cost to tax payers might not be as bad as it sounds.