Predator-Style Helmets Allow Pilots to See Through Planes

nitroy2k writes "It is only the neck and shoulders that prove there is a human being in there somewhere. And this isn't any Star Trek or Final Fantasy kind of trick, but the next generation of RAF fighter pilots' look, which kinda makes you wish you were in the army." And you thought Air Wolf had badass headgear.

Comments

Air Wolf

[Cytlid]

And you thought Air Wolf had badass headgear.

  You'll have all the kids thinking "Is Air Wolf a new game for the wii???".

army?

[TrappedByMyself]

which kinda makes you wish you were in the army

So you could admire the cool helmets the Air Force, Navy, and Marine pilots have?

Re:army?

[EvilMonkeySlayer]

Navalised Typhoons are the backup plan in-case the Americans don't come through with the F-35's flight system software, which they are somewhat bizarrely not handing over. I heard there was some progress but it all seems to have gone somewhat quiet of recent.

Apparently the UK has plans to develop a navalised Typhoon, but plans are very different from an actual plane. So, in otherwords.. if the UK doesn't get the flight software for the F35 then the UK pulls out of the JSF program, doesn't buy any F35's and instead develops a navalised Typhoon.

Of course, there are good points and bad points to that:

Good:
* The Typhoon is faster, has a longer range and in every regard except for stealth/low radar visibility outperforms the F35
* We won't be dependant on the USA in the slightest

Bad:
* It will take time and lots of money to develop a navalised Typhoon
* The Typhoon isn't capable of VTOL (useful for the current Invincible class carriers, not so much for the new QE class carriers)
* A navalised Typhoon will cost more maintenance wise than an F35 for carrier usage. (think wear and tear, landing vertically with a nice lift fan doesn't damage an aircraft airframe or under carriage anyway near as bad as an arrestor hook landing)

The scenic view

[GaryOlson]

Seeing right through their own aircraft fuselage to the ground below...

How many pilots will get vertigo the first time they look down thru their seats at the ground zipping by a few thousand feet below? I would. Will the masks include organic fluid caching and isolation?

Re:The scenic view

[EaglemanBSA]

Good point though, my brother is an airline pilot, but he's terrified of heights. He's fine, as long as he can't look down.

Earlier ...

[foobsr]

http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/10/new-helmet-allows-fighter-pilots-to-peer-through-the-jet/

engadget, CA - 23 hours ago
No, the headgear in the photo above wasn't some unused prototype created for The Terminator; rather, it's a snazzy new helmet designed to give fighter ...

CC.

pfft

[Digitus1337]

Jerks have been using these things in first person shooters for years.

Link to original article

[SpectreBlofeld]

Link to the original Daily Mail article: The Terminator-style helmets that allow fighter pilots to see through their planes

  Note to submitters and Slashdot editors: Don't link to blogs. They get Slashdotted.

  It's especially shiatty when a blogger doesn't even provide a link to the article he's pulling his text and images from.

  Interesting how the blogger switched the referenced Schwarzenegger character of choice from The Terminator to the Predator in his 'article' to make it appear as original content.

Re:The Pressing Question

[GammaKitsune]

If Civilization has taught me nothing, it's that you should always upgrade your military technology as much as possible, even when you don't seem to need it. Also, Gandhi is a huge jerk.

Re:Slashdotted?

[echucker]

Because it's really not a FA at all... It's a blog that links to an article. Would it kill the editors to actually link to a story, instead of just bump up joehaveablog's hit counter?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:The Pressing Question

[Thirdsin]

With the cold war over, and the major super powers having no one to have air battles with, is it really necessary to spend huge amounts of money to fight an enemy that doesn't exist? I mean, back in the Cold War, it made sense-ish, but since the current battle is against "terror", and "terror" doesn't have an air force ...
It's not so much about getting ready for war, as it is deterrence. Making sure the potential aggressor is aware of the risk so that he refrains from aggression. (See Iran). You don't need another cold war for a reason to have bigger guns than the next guy...

Re:The Pressing Question

[wjsteele]

With the cold war over, and the major super powers having no one to have air battles with

Right... whenever you have more than one country who thinks they are a superpower, you have a good chance that there will be a war.

A good country that want's to remain around needs to have a strong defense. Just because the current battlefield isn't so obvious doesn't mean the next one won't be.

Bill

Nothing to do with "Predator"

[evilviper]

The helmet isn't "Predator-Style" in the slightest. No thermography vision at all. And more to the point, even if it had it, that certainly wouldn't allow you to "look through an airplane". Moron bloggers and the tabloids just saw a helmet that was ugly and thought of Predator.

It's really closest to a VR helmet, hooked up to cameras on the F-35 JSF to give pilots a 360 view.

Re:The Pressing Question

[meringuoid]

With the cold war over, and the major super powers having no one to have air battles with, is it really necessary to spend huge amounts of money to fight an enemy that doesn't exist? I mean, back in the Cold War, it made sense-ish, but since the current battle is against "terror", and "terror" doesn't have an air force ...

The Russians are probing European air defences again; I think it was just last month one of their bombers was intercepted over the North Sea by the new RAF Typhoons. Used to happen all the time in the Cold War - just testing how watchful the West really is, how quick to respond to an intruder. Nothing outright hostile, just a... friendly... reminder that they're there. North Korea is opening up to outside business investment and to tourism from the South to Mt Paektu, but on the other hand they've been playing with nukes lately, so that one could go either way. Not so long ago there was the war in Yugoslavia, right on our doorstep, yet little got done about it till the Yanks got involved - that was embarrassing. Belarus is run by a weirdo who keeps trying to re-establish the Soviet Union despite the fact that the Russians want as little to do with him as possible. The president of Turkmenistan is an egomaniac who makes Kim Jong Il look positively humble, though he seems content to keep to his own frontiers. Any day now our esteemed allies could drag us into a war with Iran. And it's probably only a matter of time before we have to do something about Zimbabwe.

Sure, today we're mostly fighting Iraqi rebels, against whom the air force can do relatively little - but that won't be the case forever. Britain gets into an awful lot of fights.

A half-measure at best

[Thagg]

Or maybe a quarter-measure.

Fighter planes design is very compromised by the requirement that the pilot be able to see out the canopy. Typically, you find the cockpit cantaleivered way out in front of the center of gravity. In more recent planes, the requirements of stealth require dramatic measures to enable vision from the cockpit while still maintaining a low radar profile. I feel, too, that in any serious war you're going to find that the easiest way to bring down an airplane is to blind the pilot with lasers.

So, put the pilot right in the middle of the airplane in an opaque cockpit. Put a large number of wide-bandwidth sensors on the plane that would enable the pilot to see better than he could with his own eyes, certainly over a wider frequency and contrast range. You could armor this cockpit much more easily, it could be far more stealthy, and it could be far more structurally sound. You could have redundant sensors that could be deployed if the primary sensors are blinded.

Now, some might say that we should go all the way and put the pilots on the ground -- and they have a point. But, I think that the amount of bandwidth available inside the plane would be far greater than you could ever hope to transmit securely over the air.

Thad Beier

Link to the actual article

[Jucius Maximus]

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Predator-Style-Hemlets-Allow-Pillots-To-See-Through-Planes-70542.shtml