Soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division used the latest prototype of IVAS during a training exercise in October 2020 at Fort Pickett, Virginia. (US Army)
Defence technology company Anduril Industries will assume control of the US Army's Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) programme from Microsoft, replacing the computer software conglomerate as the prime contractor on the troubled programme.
Pending approval from the US Department of Defense (DoD) for the deal, Microsoft “will transition contractual responsibility for IVAS, along with its associated hardware, intellectual property, facilities, equipment, and personnel” to Anduril, according to a joint statement released by both companies on 11 February.
“The IVAS program represents the future of mission command, combining technology and human capability to give soldiers the edge they need on the battlefield,” Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey said. “The ultimate goal [of IVAS] is to create a military ecosystem where technology acts as an extension of human capability,” he said in the joint statement.
Characterised as a “collaboration” between the two companies, the pending transition deal will still see Microsoft as the primary cloud service provider (CSP) for the IVAS programme, according to both statements.
Further, both companies agreed that Microsoft's Azure cloud computing services will be the “cloud partner” in support of Anduril's artificial intelligence (AI) endeavours via its Frontier AI initiative, the statements said.
“Azure, through its commercial, ... government, and classified clouds, provides high resiliency, sophisticated capabilities, flexibility, and advanced security, designed to meet the stringent compliance requirements of the nation's most sensitive data,” officials from both companies said in the joint statement, regarding the decision to retain Azure.
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