Anduril has shared new details about the augmented-reality headset for the military it is prototyping with Meta, including a vision for ordering drone strikes via eye-tracking and voice commands. The defense-tech company won a $159M prototyping contract last year for the Army's Soldier Born Mission Command project, working with Meta to build glasses that attach to existing military helmets. Quay Barnett, who leads the effort as a vice president at Anduril following a career in the Army's Special Operations Command, says his goal is to optimize "the human as a weapons system."
The glasses will overlay information onto a soldier's field of view — a compass, a map of the area, nearby drone locations, or AI-driven recognition of targets like trucks. The soldier would then speak to the interface in plain language to order an evacuation or plan a route. Anduril is testing Google Gemini, Meta Llama, and Anthropic Claude as the large language model layer to translate speech into commands the software can follow. The engine for it all is Anduril's Lattice software, which incorporates data from different military hardware into one picture.
Barnett's team is designing the headset to carry out multi-step tasks. A soldier might send a drone to surveil an area and instruct it to come back once it finds something that looks like an artillery unit. The system would then recommend courses of action, like sending a nearby drone to strike, that would require approval by the normal chain of command. Leading the system through this might not require speech — the soldier could instead communicate through tracked eye movements and subtle taps.
Key facts
- 01Anduril won a $159M prototyping contract for the Army's Soldier Born Mission Command project to build augmented-reality glasses with Meta.
- 02The glasses will overlay maps, drone locations, and AI-driven target recognition, then let soldiers order strikes via eye-tracking and voice commands.
- 03Anduril is testing Google Gemini, Meta Llama, and Anthropic Claude as the large language model layer to translate speech into commands.
- 04The Army announced in March it would spend $20B to integrate Anduril's Lattice software with essentially its entire infrastructure.
- 05The Army is expected to move its top SBMC choice into production in 2028 if it picks one — Microsoft's previous $22B contract was cancelled.
The Army announced in March it would spend $20B to integrate Lattice with essentially its entire infrastructure. That is separate from the SBMC prototyping contract. Anduril has also embarked on a self-funded side project called EagleEye, announced in October, to design its own helmet and headset combo that the military has not asked for but Anduril insists it will prefer and purchase in the end.
“Anduril is testing Google Gemini, Meta Llama, and Anthropic Claude to translate soldier speech into commands the software can follow.”— Jaeden Schafer
Component parts for both prototypes began arriving in March. Because of federal military contracting rules, these parts required new supply chains that do not rely on Chinese companies, unlike Meta's commercial smart glasses. The company is also testing a new system for digital night vision, which uses electronic sensors and algorithms to boost low levels of light, through techniques rooted in both generative AI and older machine learning.
Multiple technical challenges remain. The prototypes must operate in an environment full of dust, explosions, and smoke. Adding the computing power and battery life needed means more weight for soldiers already carrying upwards of 100 pounds. The technology has to work in environments without ubiquitous 5G cell connections, which means powerful computer vision and AI models must run locally on the device.
Jonathan Wong, a former US Marine who works as a senior policy researcher at RAND on Army efforts to buy new tech, says the product will fail if it costs more of a soldier's attention than it saves. "How much mental bandwidth do you have to be both aware of your surroundings and to operate this technology in a way that makes you and your whole unit better?" he asks. Wong recalls that as a platoon commander, he had a radio that operated on 3 different channels at once. "The moment that two people were on different channels talking at the same time, I immediately couldn't comprehend anything that either one of them was trying to tell me, and I was probably not aware of my own surroundings. I think there are limits to what you can take in."
Anduril is not the only company competing. Rivet, which specializes in wearable sensors for the military, received a $195M prototyping contract at the same time, and in March the Israeli defense-tech company Elbit received its own $120M contract. This all comes after Microsoft lost its role leading the Army's smart glasses effort following a Pentagon audit that found the Army was not properly testing the glasses, a mistake that could have wasted $22B. The Army is expected to move its top choice for the SBMC program into production in 2028 if it picks one at all.
The partnership reunites Anduril founder Palmer Luckey with Meta. In 2017, Facebook ousted Luckey following an internal conflict involving his support for Donald Trump. The two are now back in the augmented-reality business together, while Mark Zuckerberg has also adopted a friendlier posture toward the second Trump administration. For the Army initiative, Meta is building the displays and waveguides that send visuals to the user's eye without blocking the view. The suite of smart glasses, night vision, and sensors will be attached to the helmets and gear soldiers already wear, with a separate battery pack. The EagleEye version will incorporate the tech into the helmet itself.
Such a system would mark a major escalation in how closely soldiers rely on imperfect AI systems. Computer vision models used to identify objects have long been employed by militaries, but these technologies have not yet made their way to most frontline soldiers. A smart glasses system tasked with identifying threats and recommending strikes would introduce massive new risks of errors.
Wong says that even if the technology is all technically feasible, it might take years of field testing to know if the system is actually useful for soldiers. "It's got to work, and it's got to be pretty seamless," he says. "It's a high bar." For the Army to buy it at scale, the interface must present only the right information at the right time, not add to the cognitive load soldiers already carry.
The stakes for Anduril are significant. The company's Lattice software is already winning major Army integration contracts, and a successful SBMC deployment would cement its role as the platform layer for AI-enabled warfare. Even if the Army does not prefer EagleEye in the end, Barnett says Anduril will attempt to sell the system to foreign militaries. The company is betting that augmented-reality headsets are the next generation of combat interface, even if the technology is still years from proving itself in the field.
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