
Magic Leap Is Bidding on an Army Combat Contract - mmaanniisshh
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-21/magic-leap-is-bidding-on-an-army-combat-contract?srnd=technology-vp
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excalibur
Americans need this technology to gain widespread military application in
order to make all of the Tactical Flashlights we bought on the Internet useful
as a countermeasure.

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dogma1138
Similar goggles are used by armored vehicle crews to get better situational
awareness the users won’t necessarily be exposed.

Also flashlight in the dark is very good against a mark one eyeball and even
better against a mark one eye ball augmented with night vision without good
flash protection.

Virtually every military has already adopted a technology that can be easily
defeated with a bright light they still use it because it’s better than the
alternative and a bright light is a very good way of ensuring that your
enemies know exactly where to aim their tracers at which is why you don’t tend
to use flashlights in combat to defeat night vision because for every bloke
you temporarily blind there will be 10 shooting at you the moment you turn it
on.

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maxxxxx
I guess they can hire the Theranos board to move this forward....

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ghostbrainalpha
Just because Magic Leap hasn't really delivered on a mind blowing consumer
product doesn't mean they can't create something great for military use.

Google Glass just wasn't cool enough or useful enough to become the next
iPhone but it did very well for certain applications.

If Drone Pilots could use Magic Leap headsets to pull in ANY useful
information to their field of view while flying a mission it would be a step
forward the military would be happy to pay for.

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dogma1138
AR company bidding on HMD contracts who would’ve thought...

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oh-kumudo
Seems like a legit use case.

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Pica_soO
Sorry but- after the JSF debacle- is this not already a dead duck? Honestly-
on a battlefield, everything in addition you want has to be unobtrusive,
totally intuitive and non-view obstructing. The last thing you want after a
IDE has blown up, to see MS Clippy hoping through the wreckage, producing
friendly fire.

Just take the integrated battlefield promised with the JSF, generating more
Noise then usage. Im sure, you could add something similar in theory to a FPS,
basically estimating the position of a retreating shooter.

But why bother and risk - when some well placed mortars will do that?

Just because it looked good in scifi movies, doesent mean its good in reality.

Only parties that could benefit from this, are specialists- meaning, drone-
flights, commanding officers and upgraded personal- (medics in need for direct
instructions by a doctor) - even those could usually be easier given without
the AR.

And thats from someone who is a huge AR fan. Maybe im overlooking some
benefits- i would really appreciate some usecases - if i missed them.

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ericd
Maybe non-obstructive collaborative battlefield annotations would be helpful?

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carlosdp
I don't know why he was flagged to death, but I think Pica_soO was spot on.
Regardless of anyone's opinion of whether they _should_ bid for the contract
or not, none of the AR headsets publicly available, definitely including Magic
Leap's, seems anywhere near good enough for what the Army needs...

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noetic_techy
So what? God forbid a tech company not based in SV contribute to the defense
of Western values!

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amaccuish
Defending them from whom exactly?

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ghostbrainalpha
Ahhh.... I know this one from Jeopardy.

That would be "Terrorists who hate our Freedom" for $400 Alex.

