On their website, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) from the United States Department of Defense put out a sources sought notice on the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) for training soldiers to operate in “a battlefield nuclear warfare (BNW) environment, or performing radiological threat objects find and interdict operations.” The DTRA is looking for companies to outline their own platforms, hardware, and how environments can be modified to accommodate new exercises.
It should be noted that a sources sought notice does not necessarily mean that proposals or bids are available for vendors. It simply means that the agency putting out the notice is effectively doing market research to see the availability of contractors in the marketplace. According to Coley Government Contract Services author JF Bierlein, businesses should respond to the sources sought notice with a one-size-fits-all capability document that demonstrates credibility in delivering the services asked for in the notice. Interested parties have until August 27th, 2019 at 2:00 PM EST to submit their documents on the General Services Administration’s website.
While this particular request is new, the U.S. military’s use of VR/AR to train soldiers isn’t. The Army has been using their Synthetic Training Environment to train soldiers in VR scenarios so that they can practice combat scenarios before ever stepping foot onto a battlefield. And as for major contractors, Microsoft developed a controversial, custom HoloLens 2 headset for the Army as well that’s planned to be in the field by 2022.
