The House Armed Services Committee is seeking details from the Army on the specific assessment criteria it will use for evaluating the latest version of its Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) as the service heads into a critical testing period for the new headset.
HASC adopted an amendment from Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) during its markup of the fiscal year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act directing the Army’s acquisition chief to brief the panel on how it will judge the success of IVAS 1.2 in meeting requirements and usefulness on the battlefield.
“The committee is encouraged by the progress being made with the Integrated Visual Augmentation System and notes the positive soldier feedback that contributed to the Army’s decision to proceed with phase 2 of the development effort of IVAS 1.2,” HASC writes in the amendment. “As the Army moves towards its production decision for IVAS 1.2, the committee encourages the Army to establish acceptance criteria that is consistent across all Army procurement activities.”
Stefanik’s directive was adopted as part of an amendment package for the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee’s portion of the NDAA, with HASC then voting 57-1 late Wednesday evening to advance its $883.7 billion version of the defense policy bill to the House floor for full consideration (Defense Daily, May 23).
Army officials told lawmakers last week the service is set to receive additional IVAS 1.2 headsets from Microsoft [MSFT] in the coming weeks for larger-scale testing before the end of the year, noting the results from the evaluation will determine the fate of the potential $22 billion program (Defense Daily, May 16).
After gathering some feedback on an initial handful of upgraded IVAS 1.2 systems received last summer, Army Acquisition Chief Doug Bush told the Senate Armed Services Airland Subcommittee last Wednesday the service is now preparing to take the program into platoon and company-level testing as the service eyes a future buy of thousands of headsets in fiscal year 2025.
In March 2021, the Army awarded Microsoft a deal worth up to $21.9 billion over the next 10 years to move the IVAS augmented reality headset program from rapid prototyping into production (Defense Daily, March 31, 2021).
Following an operational test with the initial 1.0 version of IVAS in June 2022, Army officials had detailed a plan to adjust the program’s timeline to address reliability, low-light sensor performance and form factor issues identified during the evaluation and in early January 2023 awarded Microsoft a $125 million deal to work on developing IVAS 1.2.
“The committee understands that according to the [DoD IG], the Army did not define clear measures of user acceptance levels to determine whether IVAS will meet end user needs during the IVAS 1.0 and IVAS 1.1 efforts,” HASC wrote in the amendment.
The briefing directed in Stefanik’s amendment would be required to cover the specific user acceptance criteria for testing and evaluation of IVAS 1.2, a breakdown of the requirements for IVAS 1.2 and details on the process used to consider soldier feedback on “IVAS form, fit, function and contribution to mission success.”