When it enters service, the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter will lay claim to the title of the most advanced warplane in the world. Its pilots will have the most advanced helmets as well ... and there's more to it than protecting the pilot's head against knocks. Unfortunately, the gap between designing the helmet and building it has proven wider than originally thought and issues such as poor image quality are so severe that the F35's testing program faces serious delays, so F-35 prime contractor Lockheed Martin brought in BAE Systems to provide a substitute. Read More
1 comment:
Whenever I see one of these "super data environment helmets", the same three questions pop into my alleged mind;
1. How much does it weigh? Can the pilot's neck muscles hold it up for a long-radius mission?
2. (Persuant to [1]) The pilot is wearing one of these, he gets the DEEDLEDEEDLEDEEDLE of an AAA radar locking him up, or worse yet there's a MiG-35 on his six, and he goes into a tight break and split-S to get out of the other guy's engagement envelope, and hopefully (in the case of the MiG) force an overshoot so he can pull lead and get a boresight. Taking some serious G forces, including transverse G, in the process.
With that much mass on his head, what happens to his neck?
3. Even disregarding (1) and (2), what about peripheral vision?
This thing might be very useful for any pilot running an RPV ACAV, but for a pilot actually in the front office of an actual manned fighter, I have my doubts.
cheers
eon
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