Towards human improvements
And if humans could see like a robot, calculate like a supercomputer and receive information in real time directly in their eyes, at least for North American soldiers this could be real, it is the new commitment of the United States to transform its combatants into true human-machine hybrids and behind this revolution are two unlikely names in the military scenario META and Anduril.
Together these technology giants are uniting augmented reality, artificial intelligence and battle command and a single wearable device that promises to change everything we know about modern combat. The heart of this innovation is the integration between META's immersive headsets initially developed for the civilian consumer and Anduril's powerful Lattice system, an AI-powered command and control network.
This fusion creates a kind of digital helmet capable of connecting soldiers to a network of drone sensors and autonomous platforms, delivering critical data in real time, as if the user were seeing through the military infrastructure itself, motion sensors, thermal images, 3D mapping and models trained with Meta's AI systems converge for a new way of visualizing the battlefield.
Everything is controlled by an intuitive interface adapted for the chaos of combat, the operator accesses tactical maps, warning signs and intelligence information directly through vision, instead of physical maps or radio commands, the system delivers the entire scenario to the soldier as a digital layer superimposed on reality, a true extended reality.
Could it be that we are witnessing the creation of the first military cyborg?
AI filters the data, anticipates movements, identifies objectives and suggests safe routes, the promise is clear, faster, safer decisions and with fewer human errors, this technology was designed to be scalable and agile instead of long bidding processes and custom military development META and Anduril are using cutting-edge commercial technologies and adapting them for tactical purposes.
This is now and accelerates delivery time, proof of this is that software updates that previously took months are now distributed in less than a day and with the IVAS program being transferred from Microsoft to Anduril the so-called SBMC Next the new portable command for soldiers is already in tests with real prototypes in the field, but there is a dark side in this evolution, to what extent is a soldier equipped with augmented intelligence still an ordinary human.
Could it be that by delegating critical decisions to AI systems in the field we are not running the risk of eliminating the human factor from the equation, the ability to perceive the world, to doubt, to feel fear, all of that can be diluted when a helmet is used that transforms reality into data and numbers, the border between human and machine is disappearing and perhaps without realizing it the first military cyborg is already among us. And what do you think about soldiers using robot eyes and a brain augmented by evolution? Was it the beginning of something that we still do not fully understand?
