Well at least someone’s interested in buying Hololens
Microsoft has signed a $480m contract to supply 100,000 HoloLens augmented reality headsets to the US military – literally doubling the number of HoloLenses that have been sold since its launch more than three years ago.
The contract signing presumably means someone in the armed services tried the headset on and decided that they wanted to pay money for more of them. Perhaps it was an end-of-year budget-filling acquisition.
The goal is to “increase lethality by enhancing the ability to detect, decide and engage before the enemy,” according to an official description of the project and Microsoft is understandably excited about the prospect: “This new work extends our longstanding, trusted relationship with the Department of Defense to this new area,” a statement emitted from Redmond revealed.
The purchase is part of the US military’s Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) – a $548 million program approved by Congress that sits in the military’s research and development arm. The general idea is to create a system for individual solders that use infrared and low-light detectors to give them greater visibility on the battlefield.
