The Week that SBMC Industry Teams Began Forming Up

Remember the US Army’s IVAS (Next) program?

Our followers will recall the service tabbed Microsoft’s commercially available HoloLens 2 heads-up display for the IVAS (Integrated Visual Augmentation System) program and eventually awarded the company a 10-year, $22 billion production deal. IVAS was envisioned to be the service’s MR capability suitable for operations and virtual training, including in conditions of darkness. Numerous missteps, technical issues and other impediments plagued the program. This February, Anduril Industries (Anduril) joined the Microsoft team in an effort to right the program that eventually gained the acquisition moniker IVAS Next. But the Army wasn’t finished, yet.

SBMC

A new Army acquisition thrust, Soldier Borne Mission Command (SBMC) (formerly IVAS Next) is advertised to deliver new helmet-mounted displays and edge compute hardware. The underpinning and evolving SBMC-Architecture (A) program provides the open software platform that integrates them into a fielded, soldier-ready capability, integrated with Army operational combat units.

Buckle up as this is an early, fast-moving Army acquisition effort.

This 4 September, the Army penned an agreement with Rivet Industries to be one SBMC prime. Rivet’s press release emphasized SBMC was a “next-generation capability for the US Army that fuses data from Soldiers, sensors, and mission systems into one clear operational picture, day or night.”

Rivet appears to be all-in for the evolving SBMC competition. A recent LinkedIn post from a corporate member reported, “In less than two years, Rivet Industries has secured:

- $195M Soldier Borne Mission Command prime agreement with the U.S. Army

- $90M in funding at a $572M valuation”

Earlier this week, 8 September, Anduril announced it was also awarded a contract for an initial prototyping period to develop a night vision and MR system as part of the SBMC program. The press release noted, in part, “This award represents the largest effort of its kind to equip every soldier with superhuman perception and decision-making capabilities—fusing the best of night vision, augmented reality, and AI into a single system.”

Also on 8 September, Maxar Intelligence announced it is partnering with Anduril to provide geospatial intelligence for the SBMC-A program that will underpin a next-generation MR command-and-control (C2) system that Anduril is developing for the service. The press release significantly added, the C2 system will power the SBMC-A program, “which will provide US warfighters with a futuristic mixed-reality capability that overlays real-time battlefield intelligence directly into a soldier’s field of view. Advanced headsets will display digital information on top of their real-world view during live combat missions and training. This system requires detailed, accurate and up-to-date 3D maps to serve as the spatial foundation for intelligence flowing into the system.”

MS&T will continue following and commenting on activities in the Army’s SBMC program.