SBMC is a follow-on project to the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, which is limited to a headset, while SBMC includes complementary computers and wearables like watches. In the end, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey told reporters on Monday, there will probably be “dozens” of different headsets under the program, rather than one contractor picked to make one product. 

“I actually think that probably most of the SBMC hardware that is sold to the Army over the next 10 years…is not going to be made by Anduril. It's not going to be made by any of the people who are competing for it,” he said. “It's going to be made, basically, by adaptations of commercial devices as augmented reality and virtual reality devices proliferate.” 

Anduril also has the contract to create the software for SBMC, which will integrate what soldiers see through their displays up through their chain of command. 

“I don't think that any one headset can be the headset that meets every need for every soldier in the Army,” Luckey said. “I think that was one of, actually, the major mistakes…of prior soldier augmentation systems. When you try to build one heads-up display that is the right system for a frontline infantryman, and a rotary-wing pilot, and a logistician, and someone doing training, and you're trying to make it the right headset for day and for night and for dismounted use, vehicle-mounted use…when you try to be everything to everybody, you have to make so many compromises that you built something that, in the end, is not really the right thing for anyone.”

That said, Luckey has dubbed himself “the world’s best head-mounted display designer,” going back to his creation of the Oculus Rift, an early, commercially-available VR headset.

“There's nobody better than me, and I know what I'm doing, and I'm going to make sure that we do it the right way. And we've already proven that we're making things that do not make people sick. They do not make them throw up,” Luckey said, alluding to problems with previous IVAS prototypes. “If you're going to make something somebody wears on their face, there's a high level of friction and compromise. You need to make it very lightweight. You need to be brutal about the design of the thing, making it extremely comfortable, extremely light. And you need to make sure that it is only enhancing their experience of viewing the world, not degrading it.”

Rivet, similarly, is focusing on “comfort, ruggedization, utility and compliance,” CEO Dave Marra told Defense One on Friday. 

Marra said his company’s prototype will integrate an array of voice commands to connect logisticians, maintainers and others on the battlefield and create predictive intelligence.

“These kinds of natural language interactions are the most critical element to enable,” he said. “So you think, ‘I have to control robots, and I have to do it without significant training and learning. I want to recognize nouns on the battlefield that could be a target: that could be a good guy, a bad guy, or another noun on the factory floor. I want to identify anomalies, more importantly, correlate in these data sets.’”

The program will be a key proving ground for the Army’s Transformation-in-Contact strategy, which aims to rapidly develop and field new technology by bringing prototypes into the field for soldiers to test and provide feedback on, and companies can quickly incorporate that feedback.

“I don't think that there's an appetite to spend years playing around with these exercises and demos. There is, there is an appetite to get this stuff into real combat as fast as possible, so we can see where it works, see where it falls apart,” Luckey said. “I'm thinking about this as something where we need to be delivering a system that, like other integral products that are being fielded in combat, it needs to work. It can't break, it can't put people in danger…It can't make people cybersick. And that is how we are treating this, regardless of whether it's named as a prototype sprint.”

In May, the Army announced a spate of cuts that would, among other things, end its purchases of the JLTV. The service, which has been fielding the vehicles since 2019, was still taking delivery under a joint order for 30,000 in 2023.

The Marine Corps has procured half of its total 15,000 planned buy of JLTVs, spokesman David Jordan told Defense One.

While the Marines have discussed next steps with the Army and AM General, JLTV’s manufacturer, it’s unclear how the larger service’s exit will affect things. 

The Army was not able to respond to questions from Defense One about the state of its JLTV program by press time.

The Corps was “still assessing the full impact of the Army’s abrupt exit from the joint program,” Gen. Eric Smith, the Marine Corps commandant, told the House Appropriations Committee in May.

Smith said he expected the costs of JLTVs to go up, adding, “That’s going to negatively impact the Marine Corps’ ability to fulfill its ground tactical vehicle mobility strategy, which has me concerned.”

At the current negotiated rate, which takes into account the Army’s previous plan to buy tens of thousands of them, a JLTV runs about $400,000 each. 

A month later, Smith told the Senate Appropriations Committee that the Corps would have to buy fewer JLTVs without a budget increase, adding that the Army did not consult his service before announcing it would stop buying the vehicles.

At the time, an Army leader told reporters they wouldn’t have to pay any settlement to AM General to cancel the contract, because the latest tranche buy of vehicles had been delivered in January, and the service would simply not be ordering the next round.

AM General did not respond to a request for comment from Defense One, but in a May press release said they were committed to continuing to produce their contractually obligated JLTVs, as well as Humvees.

“As we work to understand the significance of the DOD’s recent communications, we will continue to operate our HUMVEE and JLTV A2 assembly lines and our Aftermarket Fulfillment facility as normal to meet our contractual requirements and serve the Warfighter,” the release said, including a backlog of vehicles scheduled to be delivered through the end of the contract in 2027.

The company stood to net up to $8.6 billion from the full contract, which included an option to re-up for 2028. 

“The government has tremendous flexibility on contracts in terms of, you know, they can cancel it anytime,” Jerry McGinn, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former senior official in DOD’s Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy, told Defense One. 

Cancellation options are written into every contract, McGinn added, giving the government the right to axe an agreement because of performance, but also for their own convenience, as with the JLTV situation.

“And then the company, they go into these contracts knowing that the government can do this,” he said.

The Marine Corps’s fiscal year 2026 budget request doesn’t include any new JLTVs. However, the House of Representatives’ June committee report on the 2026 DOD funding bill recommends putting $345 million into Army JLTVs and another $169 million for the Corps, a reminder that it’s not always up to the individual services whether they can cancel a program.

While the government is always within its right to cancel a contract, the Army Transformation Initiative does raise some questions about its reliability as a customer, McGinn said. 

Companies expect that a new president could come with changes in priorities, he said, but “some administrations are more unpredictable than others.”