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

reuters.com

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

#51

Post by wcarss »

fwip wrote: post #33
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.

The army has a little under 500K active-duty soldiers. As a gross overestimation, if they were delivering one headset per soldier, napkin math shows: $22B / 500K = $44K per headset. Even if the tech were super useful and every single soldier got one, that price tag seems absolutely absurd. How can anyone be okay with this?

I'm not necessarily supportive of the contract or the spending or whatever, but I just want to present a reframing of the costs: imagine it's just 1000 headsets, but they're so useful they cut $1B/year+ in costs (or allow for $1B/year+ in extra operational capacity) annually for the next 50+ years. This is, allegedly, foundational work on a transformative technology, so maybe that's "the dream".

Now ... is that realistic? haha

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

#52

Post by potatoman22 »

peruvian wrote: post #41
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.

60 years isn't the best sample size for "forever".

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

#53

Post by RobRivera »

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…

if you want peace, prepare for war.

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

#54

Post by nwienert »

blunte wrote: post #38
high_priest wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I believe that many malevolent people, or at least their followers, would be much less malevolent or active if they had their basic needs met plus a little bit of cushion to enjoy life. To be more specific, many of the worst people have lived through some truly horrible childhoods (often experiencing war and poverty as a child). Stop the cycle of war and poverty, and then see how naturally malevolent people are. We h…

I think the only reason you have all your needs met is due to war, and now you sit on a pile of blood-stained surplus with clean gloves and make faces as though better.

It’s all pointless moralizing. Sure, prosperity may reduce war. I tend to think MAD and global trade have done most of the reducing. But just dismissing war as if you have some superior moral compass to anyone with absolutely no sign of any insight to reduce it, or understanding of why it happens, just reeks of privilege and cheap moralizing that I’d prefer stay on Twitter and Reddit.

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

#55

Post by uyt »

I don't care how it is used as long as the technological advances transfer back to civilian headsets too. We already have unmanned weapons that can vaporize cities. Adding a human back into the mix doesn't sound all that bad.

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

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

#57

Post by withinrafael »

numakerg wrote: post #26
withinrafael wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really possible with HoloLens. This is AR not VR or a HUD.

I'm curious, what's the obstacle? Can't they take the display from the hololens, make it smaller and integrate it into one eye of an existing headset that the military uses?

Existing HoloLens devices show semi transparent holograms overlaid on the real world so to speak, in a viewable frame size resembling something like a oversized postage stamp. (That is, holographic content does not fill your entire field of view.) It's not conducive to showing 100% opaque video content for a live drone feed, in my opinion, due to technical limitations (opacity, rendering proximity) and human comfort issues.

I appreciate that they're offering "custom" units and could theoretically fix these issues. But it _sounds_ like it'll be more of a ruggidization and compliance realignment of existing hardware. Pure speculation of course.

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

#58

Post by glitchc »

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...

Give people something to lose and they'll stop fighting.

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

#59

Post by formercoder »

fwip wrote: post #33
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.

The army has a little under 500K active-duty soldiers. As a gross overestimation, if they were delivering one headset per soldier, napkin math shows: $22B / 500K = $44K per headset. Even if the tech were super useful and every single soldier got one, that price tag seems absolutely absurd. How can anyone be okay with this?

Given you’d only be making 500k units, and you’re making them to milspec, sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
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