The Army’s number two civilian official has said it’s “too early to say” whether the service considers the new Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) headset as the replacement for its Enhanced Night Vision Goggles-Binocular.
Gabe Camarillo, the Army under secretary, told reporters that such a decision could be informed by a new night vision strategy currently in the works, which he said will assess the right mix of capabilities for the service’s enduring requirements.
“Rather than lock the Army into one answer at this point in time, I think we’re doing the prudent thing which is assessing where those capabilities are evolving and what are the needs, which are varied across the Army. I look forward to seeing what the results are of that strategy and it will inform our acquisition strategies moving forward,” Camarillo said during a press engagement following his discussion at an Association of the United States Army event last week. “And it has to take into account the threat, the evolving technology, the industrial base and then, also, just how do we expect these capabilities to upgrade over time.”
Camarillo’s comments on a night vision strategy, which he said the modernization-focused Futures Command is working on, follows the Senate Armed Services Committee including a directive in its version of the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act calling for the Army to brief lawmakers on the service’s how the service is balancing priorities for ENVG-B and IVAS (Defense Daily, July 19).
“The committee is concerned about the Army’s decision to terminate procurement of the ENVG-B before the IVAS is fully certified to meet operational requirements. This decision creates risk for soldiers and, according to the Army’s own unfunded priority list, will decrease soldier survivability,” SASC writes in its bill.
SASC also moved to restore $75 million in funding for ENVG-B procurement in its version of the bill, after the Army had requested no funding for the program in its FY ‘23 budget request.
Of the decision to not request funds for ENVG-B procurement, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told SASC in early May that Army leadership concluded it had procured the number of night vision goggles “that we thought would meet our requirements.”
L3Harris [LHX] and Elbit Systems of America each received production contracts in October 2020 worth potentially $442 million to deliver ENVG-B devices as the Army looks to replace its legacy monocular night division devices with a system designed for enhanced mobility, networked connectivity and upgraded thermal engaging technology (Defense Daily, Oct. 22 2020)
Last March, the Army awarded Microsoft [MSFT] 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).
Camarillo noted the Army just concluded the initial operational test and evaluation for IVAS in June, adding the Army is still set to make a fielding decision for “some quantity” of the future headset as it looks to begin rolling out the first version of the capability.
“We’re still working through the results to understand what [we learned] in terms of usability, software stability issues and how it would be incorporated in the force,” Camarillo said. “As we work through the IOT&E issues, I think we will work with Microsoft to be able to figure out what is the best path forward to be able to deliver a capability that will have the ability to be upgraded over time.”
Doug Bush, the Army’s top acquisition official, told Defense Daily earlier this month that early analysis of data collected from the IOT&E for IVAS is showing “positive signs” of improvements with the capability (Defense Daily, July 12).