# Anduril took over the Army’s soldier-vision program

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/anduril-took-over-the-armys-soldier-vision-program/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Palmer Luckey](https://realalpha.app/builders/palmer-luckey/) · Palmer Luckey is an entrepreneur and founder of Oculus VR and Anduril Industries. · Co-founded Anduril, which builds autonomous defense systems, and designed the Oculus Rift that revived VR.
- Host: [Shawn Ryan](https://realalpha.app/people/shawn-ryan/) · Host, The Shawn Ryan Show
- Show: The Shawn Ryan Show
- Episode: [Palmer Luckey - EagleEye: Inside the Military's AI Powered Superhuman Helmet | SRS #171](https://realalpha.app/v/bwSycrvcwAs/), Feb 14, 2025
- Moment: 3:15:28 to 3:22:31 of the episode (7 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/anduril-took-over-the-armys-soldier-vision-program/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/bwSycrvcwAs/?t=11728

## Quote

> “We did it very quickly. It was actually a **less than three-week process**.”
> — [Palmer Luckey](https://realalpha.app/builders/palmer-luckey/) at [3:20:11](https://realalpha.app/v/bwSycrvcwAs/?t=12011) · The Shawn Ryan Show

## Takeaways

1. Lattice added tracking and battlefield context to the IVAS display.
2. Anduril became the program’s prime contractor.
3. Luckey wants the system used across services and roles.

## About this segment

Palmer Luckey describes how Anduril connected its AI to Microsoft’s IVAS display, then took over the program and began building new hardware. The goal is a shared, real-time view of the battlefield for soldiers.

From “Palmer Luckey  - EagleEye: Inside the Military's AI Powered Superhuman Helmet | SRS #171”, Feb 14, 2025. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/bwSycrvcwAs/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[3:15:41](https://realalpha.app/v/bwSycrvcwAs/?t=11741) Let's talk about Anderle and the IVAS program. The IVAS program. So when is this coming out? I don't know yet. All right. Roughly? Roughly? Probably in a couple of weeks. So IVAS is a program that is the modern instantiation of a very old idea. This idea that you are going to augment the vision of soldiers and give them superhuman perception abilities. The idea is you can see at night, you can see thermal signatures, you can see hyperspectral signatures, you have extraordinary superhuman hearing, you're able to mark targets in the environment without projecting anything in the environment, you can seamlessly see in your heads-up display where all of your friends are, where all of your foes are, where all of the innocents and non-combatants are and have that all just seamlessly presented to you

[3:16:35](https://realalpha.app/v/bwSycrvcwAs/?t=11795) as if you're Superman. You can see through walls, you can see through night, you can see through fog, you are Superman. This idea has been around for a very long time of putting a heads-up display, a computer, and a radio on every soldier. You can even go back to Robert Heinlein's 1959 novel Starship Troopers, and that was really the concept behind the mobile infantry. They're wearing these kind of mech suits with fighter jet-style heads-up displays that show them where all their targets are, that show them where all of the good guys are, that help them do ballistics calculations showing where bullet impact is going to be in a much more intelligent way than just putting a red dot that's coaxial aligned, but actually saying, like, here is the impact point, factoring in the wind, factoring in your motion,

[3:17:19](https://realalpha.app/v/bwSycrvcwAs/?t=11839) factoring in what the other guy is doing. People have tried this over and over again through history, and the tech's just never quite been ready, and they've also not maybe worked on it in quite the right way. But most importantly, nobody's ever built a software back end that could make it work. Even if the helmets were okay, they didn't have this kind of system, whether it's AI or something else.

[3:17:38](https://realalpha.app/v/bwSycrvcwAs/?t=11858) They could understand the whole battle space, taking in sensors from everybody. So my helmet, his helmet, his helmet, and that airplane, and that airplane, and that satellite, and that ship. You get what I'm saying. Building one common fused view of the world in real time has never really been properly accomplished. And so you have programs like Future Warrior and Net Warrior and Connected Soldier and Land Warrior.

[3:18:03](https://realalpha.app/v/bwSycrvcwAs/?t=11883) You have all these different programs where the Army has tried over and over. IVAS is sort of the latest attempt at this kind of individual infantry vision augmentation system. When the IVAS contract was first awarded years ago, it was a really big deal, and I was really excited about it. I knew I couldn't compete with it because unfortunately it was being awarded right around the time that I was starting Andrel so when the IVAS program was kind of running through the wickets Andrel was 12 people obviously I was not going to be able to win this contract but as an ARVR guy I was really excited that the army was moving in that direction and they were putting a lot of resources behind it IVAS is a $22 billion contract it's enormous the plan is not to put this on the heads of one person or, you know, one top-tier unit.

[3:18:54](https://realalpha.app/v/bwSycrvcwAs/?t=11934) It's to put it on the heads of every single person in the army who's bearing a rifle. Anyone who's making contact with the enemy is going to have superhuman augmented vision that allows them to never miss anything, never miss their shot, never hit the wrong thing. You probably more than almost anybody can probably understand what an incredible tool that would be. The problem is that even IVAS has been plagued by many of the problems that have hit a lot of these other systems.

[3:19:26](https://realalpha.app/v/bwSycrvcwAs/?t=11966) You didn't have the backend that could provide all of that data to make it a useful thing rather than just a heads-up display. You didn't have the hardware working as well as it could have. There were a lot of soldier reports that it was making people sick, that it was making people dizzy, that it was causing signature problems. There were quotes from soldiers in evaluations who said, this is going to get me killed.

[3:19:48](https://realalpha.app/v/bwSycrvcwAs/?t=11988) It was running to a lot of issues. Anyway, the punchline is, over the last year, I've been working on an angle to try and get the IVAS program into a better place, to try and make it everything that it should be. A few months ago, we teamed up with Microsoft, which was the company that had won the IVAS program. IVAS contract, and that was using something based on their HoloLens system, which is now discontinued, to build the IVAS product. And we partnered with them to integrate Lattice, our AI system, with their heads-up display. So we integrated that. We did it very quickly.

[3:20:25](https://realalpha.app/v/bwSycrvcwAs/?t=12025) It was actually a less than three-week process. In three weeks, we went from teaming up to having Lattice feeding all of our three-dimensional tracking information into their existing IVAS sets of display. We did a soldier touchpoint with it. They used it in some exercises and some trials. They said, oh my god, this is incredible. I can see drones that are coming to attack me. I can see what their attack vectors are. I can see where the people controlling them are.

[3:20:51](https://realalpha.app/v/bwSycrvcwAs/?t=12051) I can see where I need to go to be safe in an amount of time that is reasonable before that drone actually gets to me. Really, really powerful stuff. But here's the really big deal. As of just about now, Anderil is taking over the IVAS program as the prime. Microsoft is transferring all of the employees, hardware, IP, facilities, everything to Anduril. We are now going to be the prime on the iVest program. We are going to continue to integrate Lattice into it, and we are building a totally new system on the hardware side that is going to be better than anything that anyone has ever seen. It is going to be by far the best AR, VR, MR, vision augmentation system that has ever been built in terms of resolution, in terms of field of view, in terms of graphical fidelity, in terms of sensor quality

[3:21:43](https://realalpha.app/v/bwSycrvcwAs/?t=12103) and what you can do with those sensors. It is a bigger jump from what exists today than the jump that I made when I started Oculus. It is a jump that I think cannot be overstated. I am very aligned with the Army's vision in terms of this being something that should be on everybody, but I think my vision goes maybe even a little further. I don't just want this on every person who's carrying a rifle.

[3:22:08](https://realalpha.app/v/bwSycrvcwAs/?t=12128) I want it on every logistician, every loadmaster, every rotary wing pilot, every fixed wing pilot. I want it deployed with everybody across every service, every branch, so that every person is eyes for everyone else. What about police?