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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

#221

Post by [deleted] »

harveywi wrote: post #47
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…

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.

[deleted]

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

#222

Post by remarkEon »

munk-a wrote: post #196
remarkEon wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is one in five such a bad ratio for useful innovation? It might speak to there being some problems with state-side testing of devices for appropriateness on the battlefield but a 20% success rate of cutting edge equipment seems pretty good. Infantry folk are probably going to use the useful bits and pack away the useless ones - that feedback will eventually trickle back to fulfillment and the kit will be updated. Als…

You make a good point. I don't know, it might be. I'm thinking of all the absolutely bonkers things that all sides in WWII came up with that were obviously expensive to develop but never really saw usefulness.

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

#223

Post by dirtyid »

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #60

As a taxpayer this seems like a waste of money. AR is just a novelty. If I were a solider in a firefight, I don't think I'd want some annoying UI in my eye telling me were to shoot.

Probably better investment than this:

US Army trials augmented reality goggles for dogs

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54465361

On the other hand AR has civilians uses. This is just US civil military fusion at work.

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

#224

Post by bpodgursky »

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #60

As a taxpayer this seems like a waste of money. AR is just a novelty. If I were a solider in a firefight, I don't think I'd want some annoying UI in my eye telling me were to shoot.

Soldiers spend about 1000x as much time training, inventorying, fixing things, learning, and communicating as they do in a firefight, and AR is potentially very high value-add in all of those spaces.

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

#225

Post by xquarterly »

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…

I think in these cases the actual utility of the product does not matter. What matters is that someone gets a government contract and something exchanges hands.

Something can be a failed national health platform, or toys like this one.

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

#226

Post by nullserver »

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…

Opinion. The goal is to make certain people a lot of money. See F22 for example.

If actually works that’s a bonus.

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

#227

Post by hutzlibu »

Shacklz wrote: post #202
hutzlibu wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, this I call change of culture ...

It happens. But not overnight. And being rich in children is not only viewed as retirement savings, there are other reasons too ... which might change with general development. But again, maybe not overnight. Which was the scenario I was talking about.

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

#228

Post by remarkEon »

chrisseaton wrote: post #218
remarkEon wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If it's made unique-soldier-dependent, I don't think it's a good idea. Lol well why would we do that? Just inventing random problems at this point.

It isn't a "random problem".

It's a legitimate question about the design principles that are being used here. Is the headset "dumb" and just shows the same HUD view for everyone, or is it custom to the soldier's position in the formation? We don't know, but it's a question to think about that has actual implications for how something like this could be used or even implemented.

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

#229

Post by notional »

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.

What happened to Magic Leap?

They pivoted to building their device for commercial use and had a bunch of military personnel images on their site before.

-- Just did a search and found this Bloomberg article from 2018 about it and it mentions MSFT bidding on the contract as well, so it looks like they tried but MSFT won it.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-21/magic-lea...

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

#230

Post by dragonwriter »

moolcool wrote: post #210
dragonwriter wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, yeah, Trump did an amazing job of lowering the bar.
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