(Bloomberg) -- Defense technology startup Anduril Industries Inc. is teaming up with Microsoft Corp. to improve the performance of new combat goggles for the US Army, Anduril said Thursday, in a project that may generate as much as $21.9 billion from the service over a decade.
The goggles, based on virtual reality headsets, are intended to give soldiers everything from night-vision capability to warnings of incoming airborne threats. Although Microsoft’s earlier versions left soldiers with headaches and nausea, the Army has praised an improved, slimmer version.
The Army may order as many as 121,000 of the devices contingent on a series of tests.
Earlier: Microsoft’s Slimmer Combat Goggles Win Praise From US Army Buyer
Closely held Anduril, backed by technology billionaire Peter Thiel, was founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey, who earlier created the pioneering Oculus virtual reality headset. “This is Anduril’s bread and butter, and we’ve been building the backbone for this for years,” Luckey said in the statement.
The Microsoft-Anduril alliance dovetails with a renewed push by the Pentagon to enlist startups and technology companies, reaching beyond old-line defense contractors to develop new weapons, from low-cost drones to arms equipped with artificial intelligence.
The Army goggles, known as the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, or IVAS, must pass a high-stress operational combat test next year before the service commits to full production.
Anduril is known for developing the “Ghost” drones used by the Ukrainian military, an autonomous underwater vehicle being considered for the Pentagon’s Replicator program and as one of two current competitors for the Air Force’s unmanned Collaborative Combat Aircraft. This month, the company also announced a new family of cruise missiles.
Microsoft and Anduril didn’t disclose financial terms of their new collaboration.
Earlier: Anduril Hits $14 Billion Valuation in New Defense Tech Funding
Anduril recently raised $1.5 billion in a new funding round and plans to spend hundreds of millions on a new facility to manufacture its rockets, underwater vehicles and other autonomous weapons systems at greater scale and speed.
The most recent assessment of the goggles by a small unit of soldiers occurred in August at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State. The next one is to occur in January, followed by a major operational test of their performance under combat stress situations sometime next April to June that will determine the future of the devices, according to a service statement.
(Updates with Pentagon push for new technology in fifth paragraph and Army test schedule in final paragraph)
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
