Anduril, Meta team up for Army IVAS recompete

Andruil founder Palmer Luckey (left) poses with Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg (right) in this undated photo. (Anduril)

WASHINGTON — Anduril and Meta will team to compete for the US Army’s next-gen mixed-reality, heads-up display program, the companies announced today.

In a joint statement today, the duo announced the partnership to “design, build, and field” a range of integrated XR products with military applications, including plans to bid on the recompete of the program previously known as the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS).

“The capabilities enabled by the partnership will draw on more than a decade of investment by both companies in advanced hardware, software, and artificial intelligence,” the duo wrote. “The effort has been funded through private capital, without taxpayer support, and is designed to save the US military billions of dollars by utilizing high-performance components and technology originally built for commercial use.”

Palmer Luckey, who rose to prominence after developing the civilian Oculus augmented reality headset, eventually sold that company and device to Facebook (now Meta) in 2014. After a well-documented political fallout with people inside the company, Luckey set off and launched Anduril.

“I am glad to be working with Meta once again,” Luckey said in the announcement. “Of all the areas where dual-use technology can make a difference for America, this is the one I am most excited about. My mission has long been to turn warfighters into technomancers, and the products we are building with Meta do just that.”

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder and CEO, echoed support for the mashup, adding that his company “has spent the last decade building AI and AR to enable the computing platform of the future.”

While Anduril was still in its infancy, the Army moved out with plans to provide soldiers with a mixed-reality capability suitable for both combat and virtual training, including under the cover of darkness. Ultimately, the service picked Microsoft’s commercially available HoloLens 2 heads-up display for the IVAS program and awarded it with a 10-year, $22 billion production deal.

But after years of fits and starts with the program, the service unveiled plans for a hardware recompete it is now calling the Soldier-Borne Mission Command (SBMC) competition. It’s this SBMC competition that Anduril and Meta will focus on first, and they have already submitted a white paper to the service, according to the announcement.

While the firms did not disclose SBMC bid plans, the Anduril founder has been teasing a new mixed-reality device called Eagle Eye. A company spokesperson said that Eagle Eye is actually an ecosystem of augmented reality devices and will be the centerpiece of the duo’s bid.

Regardless of the new team’s success vying for the contract, Anduril is expected to have a role in the revamped program after assuming Microsoft’s $22 billion production deal for the original IVAS contract. Under that umbrella, Anduril is expected to develop the network portion of the program, in part, with its Lattice software platform.

“Since the Army’s novation of the original IVAS […] contract from Microsoft to Anduril, Anduril has made significant progress to transition IVAS to Soldier-Borne Mission Command from concept to demonstrated, soldier-tested capability, streamlining operations, accelerating delivery timelines and reducing costs,” today’s press release said. “Software updates that used to take 180 days now reach the field in under 18 hours, and Lattice-integrated IVAS headsets are in testing now.”