News for the augmented reality industry. Maybe the biggest news in the history of this nascent. The military says microsoft will build one hundred and twenty thousand custom. Hololens headsets for the us army. Validation of the use case for a are in some very serious real world conditions. Yes but also look at how much this validates the hololens as a business microsoft says the contract could be worth up to twenty one point. Eight billion dollars over ten years. Think of all those years and billions of dollars spent on moon shots over at google and in one fell swoop. Microsoft has been like yeah. Hold our beer as brad sam's tweeted and just like the rnd costs for this product have been more than recovered and quote and something tells me if these things prove useful we could eventually see way more than one hundred and twenty thousand units ordered quoting cnbc. This deal follows a four hundred and eighty million dollar contracts microsoft received to give the army prototypes of the integrated visual system or es in two thousand eighteen. The new deal will involve providing production versions the standard issue. Helen's which cost thirty five hundred dollars enables people to see holograms overlaid over their actual environments and interact using hand and voice gestures in iva s. Prototype that a cnbc reporter trade out in two thousand nineteen display a map and a compass and had thermal imaging to reveal people in the dark. The system could also show the aim for a weapon. Quote the ivy a headset based on holland's and augmented by microsoft azure cloud services delivers a platform. That will keep soldiers safer and make them more effective. Alex kitman a technical fellow at microsoft and the person who introduced the helen's in two thousand fifteen wrote in a blog post quote. The program delivers enhanced situational awareness enabling information sharing and decision making in a variety of scenarios and quote. The headset enables soldiers to fight rehearse and train in one system. The army said in a statement. The contract which was awarded on friday has a five year base period where they five year option after that and army spokesperson told cnbc an email. The pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for