Meta and Palmer Luckey haven’t had the best history — the company parted ways with the Oculus founder under less than pleasant terms — but it may be that Mark Zuckerberg and Luckey have made up. Why? Money, of course. And American military contracts.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Meta and Luckey’s Anduril Industries are partnering up to build a system called EagleEye, a battlefield augmented reality that would have Tom Clancy (and Ubisoft) salivating.
Meta guns for more money
Comparisons between the proposed EagleEye hardware, destined for the United States Army, and Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier can certainly be drawn. The 2012 video game features advanced combat systems that provide each soldier with a line of sight on threats that others can see, as well as tools to counter those threats. It’s this hardware that Meta and Anduril hope to create in the real world.
The system’s capabilities would include drone detection (at some distance — anyone can detect a drone that’s about to explode at them), detection of hidden targets, enhanced audio collection, and the not-at-all-worrying ability to deploy and use “AI-powered weapons systems”. The mechanisms for how EagleEye would work aren’t detailed, but that’s expected. The proposed hardware is part of a military contract.
It’s not a done deal yet, but Meta stands a chance at winning its bid for $100 million to create VR hardware for the US Army. Partnering up with Anduril goes a long way to making it an attractive option — Luckey’s company already makes several systems for the US military complex.
Even if the contract doesn’t materialise, the partnership between Meta and Anduril will continue, and the military hardware will be built. Someone is bound to buy it. Odds are that it will be the US Army, however. The agency is spending $22 billion on an Army wearables project, and chucking $100 million at high-profile tech nerds barely dents that budget.
