(Bloomberg) -- The Senate panel that oversees defense spending made deep cuts to the US Army’s fiscal 2023 procurement request for Microsoft Corp.’s combat goggle system, citing unresolved technical concerns.

The Appropriations Defense Subcommittee cut $350 million from the Army’s procurement request for more than $400 million in fiscal 2023 for the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, or IVAS, a customized version of Microsoft’s HoloLens goggles.

The panel “remains concerned that IVAS continues to face software, hardware and user-acceptance challenges that the Army has not sufficiently addressed,” it said Thursday when Democrats released a proposed $808.6 billion Pentagon spending bill for the coming year, up from President Joe Biden’s request of $773 billion.

The goggles would let commanders project information onto a visor in front of a soldier’s face and incorporate features such as night vision. It’s a customized version of the company’s HoloLens goggles. The Army has projected spending as much as $21.9 billion on 121,500 devices, spare parts and support services over a decade if all options are exercised.

The defense spending panel said it was encouraged by the Army’s decision last year to extend testing and evaluation for an additional 10 months. It said the device has the potential to improve soldiers’ battlefield capabilities while representing an important step in the Pentagon’s efforts to “engage with non-traditional defense contractors” such as Microsoft that are “capable of delivering innovative capabilities that meet warfighter requirements.”

In June, the Senate panel’s House counterpart already adopted a proposal to cut all but $24.2 million of the Army’s request for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, citing “questions still outstanding regarding the production viability” of the goggles.

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Author: Tony Capaccio and Roxana Tiron