[4eyes] FW: Fw: F35 Helmet

[Matthew Turk]

Someone forwarded this to me, and I thought it might be of interest to some of you.

 

            Matthew

 






 

Subject: F-35 helmet

 

The helmet used with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) allows pilots to see through their aircraft.  This is how the next generation of Royal Air Force fighter pilots will look:  only the neck and shoulders prove there’s a human being in there somewhere.  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 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.



 

The supersonic JSF is being developed jointly with the  U.S. and is to replace the Harrier jump jet.   Britain is to buy 150 aircraft at around £10 billion, or £66 million each.  [ Canada is also cooperating in JSF development but no decision has been made about acquisition.] 



 

Prototypes of the helmet were used in flight by  U.S. pilots earlier this year and are now being assessed by engineers at Boscombe Down in Wiltshire.  A Ministry of Defence spokesman said:  “The computerised symbology will be displayed directly on to the pilot's visor, providing the pilot with cues for flying, navigating and fighting the aircraft.  It even will superimpose infra-red imagery on to the visor to allow the pilot to look through the cockpit floor at night and see the world below—like something out of Terminator.†






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