Is there a video game-playing kid who wouldn’t buy a consumer version of this that works with PS3 and Xbox? It would make million$.
This is how the next generation of RAF fighter pilots will look. And with piercing green eyes staring out from behind the visor, it’s no surprise that the helmet has been compared to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s killer robot in The Terminator.
Pilots flying the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will have an astonishing array of technology encasing their heads – enabling them to see right through their own aircraft fuselage to the ground below.
A series of cameras on the outside of the stealth warplane feed high-resolution images into the helmet, including infra-red images at night, which are then projected on to the inside of the pilot’s visor. Special sensors inside the cockpit track the movement of the helmet, so that when the pilot turns his head his view of the skies or ground outside changes accordingly. When he looks down he sees not his own feet on the cockpit floor but the ground below, slipping past at hundreds of miles per hour.
On-board computers also feed in essential flight and combat data on to the display, as well as superimposing target symbols to locate enemy and friendly aircraft or ground targets, even if they are too far away to see with the naked eye.
Impressive! VR helmet for target acquisition, all weather imaging. Put these on tanks. What i want to know is, was Johnny Chung Lee involved in the development?
Do we start the defense contract bidding at 2 billion for 10 helmets or 3 billion? … oh I’m sorry, am I getting ahead of myself? (pun intended)
I got wood looking at that.
The good side of this is that they seem to intend keeping human beings in the system somewhere. You don’t need those for a predator drone.
I’ve already seen a few of these at fashion shows.
Like Ozzy says, thank god for the bomb!
At least military technological investigation keeps producing innovations, with it’s eventual trickle down into consumer products. I’d like to see this worked into a combat/flight simulator game on PC. Eventually, military technology is going to be so cool as to be a serious recruitment advantage, with people signing up just to be able to play. Or are we there already?
No brake pedal no problem. Send Toyota owners high tech helmets.
Haven’t I’ve seen this thing in a Star Wars movie? I wonder if they had to pay Lucas Films rights?
#3 Maverick – Calm down Sarah, this ain’t for shootin’ moose.
There’s a reflection! Zoom and enhance!
Is that JCD?
Made me think of a comedy sketch I saw once when virtual reality goggles were all the rage. I believe it was a Saturday Night Live sketch and was called “Actual Reality”. The protaganist goes out into the real world donning a helmet and goggles. It was quite funny.
I hope they haven’t added to much weight. Would hate to have to pull 5 g’s with a new helmit that weighed 2 lbs more than the old one.
We are the Borg, resistance is futile.
on a sillier note, this will will most likely be replaced next year with remote drone pilots… hhhmmm
Not a big leap to having the pilot control the aircraft from the hot tub.
RBG
Designed by Toyota’s Advanced Technology Dept!
Well cool for now but agreeing with what RGB #14 said. The days of the fighter/attack pilot are numbered.
With UAV technology accelerating, it wont be long before the f-35 systems and UVA systems are merged. Letting a pilot sit in a trailer in the Mojave and dogfight or carry out bombing missions, halfway around the world, all as if he were in the aircraft himself.
Whats one of the great things about this that has always been such a headache for the military. Think Scott O’Grady as one example. Or look at the amount of man power and material used and lost in Vietnam to rescue downed pilots. Let alone the politics of prisoners.
Really be the ultimate flight simulation, although you get shot down you lose a 100 mill worth of equipment.
So i wont be too far into the future, when they remake the movie Topgun, it will be all about the wild life of C-17, C-5, and C-130 pilots. lol
@ #16
Back when the government proposed the JSF competition Lockheed told them it would be best to design it unmanned from the ground up. The government declined, but I would expect to see an unmanned F-35 eventually. The plane already does most of the flying and fighting anyway.
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I went on a tour of one of Lockheed Martin’s facilities a couple years ago and they showed this helmet off. Pretty nifty, the extra visibility useful even if dogfighting is a thing of the past.
Not that I’m a huge supporter of the military industrial complex, but at least the F-35 is useful in the modern world and something we can sell to our allies (unlike the F-22). Having the Navy/Marines and Air Force share similar aircraft should help reduce costs too.
Just a question: Does a drone operator have to be a qualified pilot to do his job? Or just a finger-nimble video game player? Which leads to a couple more questions: Does a drone pilot get combat pay? Flight pay? What “wings” insignia do they wear on their uniform?
Animby #18 said “What “wings” insignia do they wear on their uniform?”
I really dont know the answer to that question..But if they dont have wings I would propose that they bring out the navy’s old “lighter than air” dirigible/blimp pilot wings for the purpose. Which were half a set of wings.
Which seems appropriate, they are kinda, kinda not, a pilot. lol
I don’t know what to think about this high tech war stuff. It does seem to give us a huge edge over our enemies in air war.
However, America’s high tech killing machines make us seem like souless, immoral cold blooded killers to the world — and this surely fuels conflicts.
# 20 Greg Allen:
“[…]America’s high tech killing machines make us seem like souless, immoral cold blooded killers to the world…”
Especially in Pakistan, where it seems they just have to fire a certain number of those missiles from Predator drones every week, whether they have any actual targets or not. I can’t believe they’re still killing dozens of civilians a week with those things. Don’t we have any intel on the ground there? Oh, that’s right, we had to let all the translators go because of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell…