The U.S. Army announced last week that Microsoft has been awarded a massive 10-year, $21.9 billion contract to produce an integrated vision augmentation system (IVAS) based on its HoloLens headset.

According to the contract, the goal of Microsoft's IVAS project is to develop and test "a single platform that soldiers can use for combat, rehearsal, and training." Microsoft plans to supply more than 120,000 devices to the Army over the next 10 years. In a brief blog post, Microsoft said IVAS will use the technology it designed for HoloLens and its Azure cloud platform to "provide a platform that keeps soldiers safer and more effective."

The system "leverages existing high-resolution nighttime, thermal, and Soldier onboard sensors into an integrated heads-up display to provide improved situational awareness, target engagement, and informed decision making necessary to achieve superiority over current and future adversaries," the Army says . The Army also plans to use IVAS to "create a lifelike, mixed reality training environment."

A Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC that the contract could be worth nearly $22 billion, far exceeding the $479 million contract awarded in 2019 to supply the Army with a prototype IVAS system.

Some Microsoft employees opposed the company's military contracts, protesting the 2019 contracts and demanding in an open letter that Microsoft withdraw its bid, stop developing weapons technology, and establish an external ethics review board to enforce and publicly verify compliance.

Microsoft has defended its pursuit of military contracts; in a 2018 blog post, company president Brad Smith said that the software and hardware maker supports "a strong defense of the United States" and that "those who defend it, including those from Microsoft, want the nation's best technology We want them to have access."

In a March 31 tweet, Smith noted Microsoft's history of cooperation with the military. He said, "We have long supported the efforts of the Department of Defense and the U.S. Army to modernize the U.S. military with advanced technology.

The Microsoft Workers 4 Good group, which opposed the 2019 contract, said that Microsoft "uses today to stand up for transgender people everywhere on Transgender Visibility Day, not to build weapons of war." He countered that he wants to. Microsoft is no stranger to huge military contracts. The company also signed a $10 billion cloud contract with the Pentagon to revamp its IT infrastructure.