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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

#201

Post by WebDanube »

someonehere wrote: post #87
mrkstu wrote: post #5

And here, ladies and gents, is why companies like Microsoft, will eternally resist getting aligned with internal employee groups Resisting selling to government entities, whether ICE or the Army. There is way too much money to be lost.

This makes me happy as we don’t lose out to technologically leapfrogging China and their military.

True. This opinion is controversial, but I do feel if the United States doesn't invest in military tech R&D, someone else is going to do it.

And that someone else is an authoritarian, one-party state that has a completely different set of values from the West.

Of course, military efficiency can be made better, but it's super important to keep tabs on the 'enemy,' so to speak. We're in an arms race, whether we like it or not.

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

#202

Post by Shacklz »

hutzlibu wrote: post #167
Shacklz wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the world population is already going steeply up - with people starving. The interesting part is that it is only really going up in nations that have not yet the comfort-level of western civilizations. I don't have the exact numbers at hand but in most European countries, and I guess vast parts of the US too, the population is actually stagnant or even shrinking if immigration is not considered.

Thats the hope, I know. But it might just as well have to do mainly with culture. Meaning, if peoples culture does not change, but the avaiable food does - we get the "unwanted" result of the ugly word of overpopulation - or birth control. Which is ugly as hell, too.

> But it might just as well have to do mainly with culture.

Absolutely not. Fertility rates have been going down steadily for decades in every developed nation - when children are no longer a requirement to have someone that will care for you once you reach old age, fertility rates start to drop.

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

#203

Post by gizmo385 »

verdverm wrote: post #126
colordrops wrote: post #88

Considering that there are around 150 million taxpayers in the US, this is around $150 a taxpayer. That's CRAZY.

over 10 years, so like one fast food meal a year per person.

$15 is pretty pricey for fast food.

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

#204

Post by freeone3000 »

tootie wrote: post #172
323454 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Those are both great concepts similar to the HUD on a fighter jet but having worn a HoloLens before they'd have to make significant hardware enhancements for it to be remotely practical to wear in combat. They're chunky, have poor field of view, poor brightness and contrast, require substantial power and compute capacity to be towed along.

What compute capacity? The compute device is in the headset, it's a self-contained unit and runs off of a 15W USB charger, with 2 hours of internal battery.

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

#205

Post by exclusiv »

moolcool wrote: post #66
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...

The last time the US went into a war because there were malevolent people in the world who posed a direct threat to the nation was in the 1940s

Depends how you define direct threat. The threats changed after WW2 for technological, industrial and economic reasons.

Also, I don't follow the spirit of your comment. The United Nations came out of WW2. And the US is a key member of those coalitions against any malevolent regimes.

Just how it works. A direct threat isn't a thing anymore of relevance when you're a member of a coalition.

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

#206

Post by hooande »

chrisseaton wrote: post #6
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…

Imagine being given a mission and being able to recreate the target area in VR and walk around while you conduct your estimate, orders, and rehearsals. Or imagine being able to look over a piece of ground and see the location of your people annotated through AR. Or driving a route and seeing your planned route annotated. Yes please absolutely get this into my hands.

The map is not the terrain. A VR walk through isn't as valuable if the layout of the target area changes. Same with troop locations and routes. Any training or planning use will still come down to quality of intelligence.

In general, it seems very unlikely that all of this will work coordinated in battlefield conditions. It would be like pulling off an AR MMORPG, except everyone is carrying their Xbox on their back and running around randomly

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

#208

Post by manquer »

screye wrote: post #86

Huh, I find it weird that Amazon and Msft fought so rabidly for the $10B JEDI contract, and this $22B contract seems to have gone through without any fanfare. This is 10x what Facebook paid for Oculus. I wonder what MSFT showed to them in the demos. I imagine it must have been mindblowing.

The JEDI contract was lot more competitive, AWS was technically on par or ahead of Azure, and they looked likely to be the front runners.

Facebook/Occulus likely may not have been technically eligible- Holo lens and Occulus Rift are quite different platforms[1], or less likely Facebook was not interested in the deal[2].

[1] Typical for enterprise contracts, vendors make sure the specs are custom fit for their products before the requirement becomes public, dictating the specs is most desirable way to win a deal as vendor.

[2] Given the size of deal unlikely FB was not interested, perhaps their B2G/B2M sales is not as strong as Microsoft to be able to win a deal this size.

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

#209

Post by remarkEon »

chrisseaton wrote: post #198
remarkEon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with all of this. I'll add one more: so much of what platoon leaders do now is teach about technology. There's only so many hours in the day for training, and (even back in 2013!) the load was starting to cause deficiency in basic combat tasks. We just didn't have the time between all the requirements to get everyone proficient in the myriad of sensor tech we ended up carrying. Plus, if it's possible to break…

> What happens if you can't, because "authentication"? Aren't your radios already using cryptographic fills? What do you think the difference is?

It totally depends on how authentication would be handled for the headset device. If it's handled like it is for radios, where fills are added on a regular cycle and anyone can pick up and use the device, it's probably fine. If it's made unique-soldier-dependent, I don't think it's a good idea.

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

#210

Post by moolcool »

dragonwriter wrote: post #141
moolcool wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beware "rough men" who project themselves be "compassionate and wise", lest you end up with a John McCain-type who says all the right things at home, but then wants to kill people overseas for profit.

For a lot of us, what McCain said (and even more, concretely acted on) at home for the bulk of his political career wasn't any better than his position on foreign adventures.

Oh I agree, but during the Trump years he (and even W. Bush) were lionized as these "class act" figures just because they didn't tweet recklessly, as if there's any class to their foreign policy.
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