The US Army has reportedly postponed its plan to field Microsoft’s Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) to next year.
According to a Reuters report, the US Army now plans to equip the first units with these augmented reality glasses by September 2022.
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Previously, the officials aimed to introduce IVAS in the fiscal year 2021, which ended last month.
Despite the delay, the US Army reiterated its commitment to the programme that may be worth up to $21.9bn.
Based on HoloLens, the IVAS headset was conceived to keep soldiers safer and make them more effective on battlefields.
It is supported by Microsoft Azure Cloud services and integrates several technologies such as night and thermal vision, map and augmented reality among others.
The system will help in improving situational awareness, target engagement and facilitate decision making in different scenarios, including training.
Microsoft and the US Army have worked for the past two years to enable rapid prototyping for a product. Earlier this year, Microsoft and the US Army announced that the programme will move from prototyping to the production phase.
Last month, the US Army conducted some testing of the IVAS system. It aims to conduct regular testing of the system throughout fiscal 2022.
Recently, soldiers from US Army’s 4th Infantry Division (ID) tested the next generation Assured Positioning Navigation and Timing (APNT) solution.
The solution enables soldiers to manage position integrity and timing in global positioning system (GPS)-contested environments.
