Palmer Luckey on the Pentagon’s future of mixed reality

Though few would bet against Luckey’s expertise in the realm of mixed reality, few observers share his optimism for the IVAS program. They view it, thus far, as an avalanche of failures. 

IVAS was first approved in 2018 as an effort to build state-of-the-art mixed-reality headsets for soldiers. In March 2021, Microsoft was awarded nearly $22 billion over 10 years to lead the project, but it quickly became mired in delays. Just a year later, a Pentagon audit criticized the program for not properly testing the goggles, saying its choices “could result in wasting up to $21.88 billion in taxpayer funds to field a system that soldiers may not want to use or use as intended.” The first two variants of the goggles—of which the army purchased 10,000 units—gave soldiers nausea, neck pain, and eye strain, according to internal documents obtained by Bloomberg. 

Such reports have left IVAS on a short leash with members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which helps determine how much money should be spent on the program. In a subcommittee meeting in May, Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican and ranking member, expressed frustration at IVAS’s slow pace and high costs, and in July the committee suggested a $200 million cut to the program. 

Meanwhile, Microsoft has for years been cutting investments into its HoloLens headset—the hardware on which the IVAS program is based—for lack of adoption. In June, Microsoft announced layoffs to its HoloLens teams, suggesting the project is now focused solely on serving the Department of Defense. The company received a serious blow in August, when reports revealed that the Army is considering reopening bidding for the contract to oust Microsoft entirely. 

This is the catastrophe that Luckey’s stepped into. Anduril’s contribution to the project will be Lattice, an AI-powered system that connects everything from drones to radar jammers to surveil, detect objects, and aid in decision-making. Lattice is increasingly becoming Anduril’s flagship offering. It’s a tool that allows soldiers to receive instantaneous information not only from Anduril’s hardware, but also from radars, vehicles, sensors, and other equipment not made by Anduril. Now it will be built into the IVAS goggles. “It’s not quite a hive mind, but it’s certainly a hive eye” is how Luckey described it to me. 

PHILIP CHEUNG

Boosted by Lattice, the IVAS program aims to produce a headset that can help soldiers “rapidly identify potential threats and take decisive action” on the battlefield, according to the Army. If designed well, the device will automatically sort through countless pieces of information—drone locations, vehicles, intelligence—and flag the most important ones to the wearer in real time.