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"Magic Helmet" For F-35 Ready For Delivery
Graculus writes with news that the so called "magic helmets" for the controversial F-35 are ready for action. This week, Lockheed Martin officially took delivery of a key part of the F-35 fighter's combat functionality—the pilot's helmet. The most expensive and complicated piece of headgear ever constructed, the F-35 Gen III Helmet Mounted Display System (HMDS) is one of the multipurpose fighter's most critical systems, and it's essential to delivering a fully combat-ready version of the fighter to the Marine Corps, the Navy, and the Air Force. But it almost didn't make the cut because of software problems and side effects akin to those affecting 3D virtual reality headsets.
Built by Rockwell Collins ESA Vision Systems International (a joint venture between Rockwell Collins and the Israeli defense company Elbit Systems), the HMDS goes way beyond previous augmented reality displays embedded in pilots' helmets. In addition to providing the navigational and targeting information typically shown in a combat aircraft's heads-up display, the HMDS also includes aspects of virtual reality, allowing a pilot to look through the plane. Using a collection of six high-definition video and infrared cameras on the fighter's exterior called the Distributed Aperture System (DAS), the display extends vision a full 360 degrees around the aircraft from within the cockpit. The helmet is also equipped with night vision capabilities via an infrared sensor that projects imagery inside the facemask
Built by Rockwell Collins ESA Vision Systems International (a joint venture between Rockwell Collins and the Israeli defense company Elbit Systems), the HMDS goes way beyond previous augmented reality displays embedded in pilots' helmets. In addition to providing the navigational and targeting information typically shown in a combat aircraft's heads-up display, the HMDS also includes aspects of virtual reality, allowing a pilot to look through the plane. Using a collection of six high-definition video and infrared cameras on the fighter's exterior called the Distributed Aperture System (DAS), the display extends vision a full 360 degrees around the aircraft from within the cockpit. The helmet is also equipped with night vision capabilities via an infrared sensor that projects imagery inside the facemask
FTA:
The helmet runs for about $600,000, which doesn't include software integration with the aircraft’s systems.
Spear and magic helllllemt!
Now all we need is a functional aircraft...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
that's embroiled in the Social Security IT boondoggle?!?
It's boondoggles all the way down!!!
Yes but the toilet seat has downward facing fricking lasers that scan your "bodily output" to provide full medical tri-corder capability. A bargain at twice the price.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Does this thing acutally work or is it as bugridden as the rest of the F-35? I sure would not want to be sitting in an F-35 when the rendering software has a buffering issue or just plain segfaults in the middle of a dogfight.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Check out the groupthink.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Yeah, maybe, but ours has a MAGIC HELMET!
You've got your period and comma keycaps swapped. Or you're European, I guess. Either way, it doesn't make sense to write numbers that way.
Now that we have the Magic Helmet, is somebody going to develop the spear that's supposed to go with it?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Why? What evidence or precedent do you have for that statement? When in recent history have our planes been blown out of the sky by Russian-produced missiles?
because the russian missiles worked so well in iraq in 1990 and 2003?
F-35 + electronic warfare will destroy the russian missile batteries
bigoted
"King Obama" is racist? Fuck you and your race card.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Leave the pilot on the ground and you won't need a fancy helmet.
What was wrong with the F-22 that the F-35 was going to fix?
I come here for the love
By a dedicated but somewhat mass produced Russian missile, should a major conflict arise.
Or the dozen "good enough" fighter jets that swarm it.
Iraq did not have the Archer (R-73) or Adder (R-77) all aspect missiles available. Had they had those on Su-27 or Mig-29 platforms the result might have been a lot different.
Also most of their airforce was composed of utterly obsolete Mig-21s.
http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net...
You are welcome on my lawn.
This video
http://www.c-span.org/video/?c...
shows the symbology and operation of the helmet as a reporter wears it. It's expensive, yes, but it's revolutionary.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
Why wouldn't you pretty much use this in every fighter plane we use. (I mean besides having to come up with upgraded electronics for the F-15, F-16, F-18, ETC) Why tie it to the F-35?
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
An Israeli defense company, eh?
Well, no one is quite the expert at mass murder that the Israelis are, as they're proving in Gaza right now by butchering 4 civilians for every enemy "soldier" that they kill.
Can you imagine the uproar if 80% of those killed in Afghanistan by US forces were civilians?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
You might want to look at how many F-35s are actually being ordered. They could very well be outnumbered 12 to 1 in a given engagement with, for example, China or Russia.
Falcon brain.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
This plane is an ef'ing joke, at least from my perspective as Canadian ex-military. Does not operate well in cold weather, and has only one engine. If you lose an engine while patrolling the arctic, you go down. This is an overpriced, overcomplicated piece of shit. Our government has produced at least two reports that have stated that this is an inappropriate and overpriced solution for what we need, yet regardless the federal government (across two parties) seems to keep trying to back it, and even now, another report is surfacing suggesting this might change.
Small, stupid suggestion: Screw this boondoggle, and pay Canadian companies to produce a world-class, well-designed and actually useful aircraft to replace the well-performing, but old, CF-18s. And if the US doesn't like it, too bad.
Add to that special helmets? By a country engaged in war-crimes and atrocities? Yeah, that will sell it.
Serbia managed to wipe out an F-117 with late 50's soviet SAM S-125.
Maybe iraq army was inept.
Sent from my PDP-11
It'll win all the dog fights US engages in these days! Priorities people, come on.
Benghazi. Deathpanels. Look over there!
The main characters' name was Mingolla. He was in a war in the near future in Central America. The chopper pilots wore these helmets that they never took off; they claimed the helmets let them see the future, the helmets told them he would get wounded but in a good way - just enough to get sent home.
Can't recall the name of the story though.
most expensive and complicated headwear ever constructed?
obviously never been to Ascot Ladies Day! http://www.bing.com/images/sea...
even if those numbers were true the F22 and F35 have been designed with the capability to track and engage extremely large numbers are enemy aircraft. the probably of them being swarmed by even half that number are slim to none as the mission doctrine is to engage from maximum range long before being detected, reducing the enemy numbers before they even know they are being hunted.
the F22 alone is publicly capable of carrying 6 AAMRAMs and 2 Sidewinders. the AAMRAMs would be fired off first as the distance is closed leaving 6 aircraft to deal with, 4 if the Sidewinders are launched on the way in as well. The maneuverability of the F22, combined with the computers ability to maintain tracking of the enemy fighters make the F22 absolutely lethal in a gunfight. 4 on one and even 6 on one is not much of a threat for our current fighters as it is, unless flown against a comparable nation (EF2000s, Rafales, etc), and the F22 outperforms our current jets considerably.The F35 is similarly overdesigned.
Simple fact is that a flight four F22/35's, a typical flight size, could engage and destroy as many 24 enemy fighters from long range alone, long before they even knew they were there. That's two entire air squadrons of aircraft. If you want to include mopping up some additional jets with guns, say 1 or 2 each, that's now 28 or 32 aircraft destroyed. So now 3 squadrons decimated. Those are numbers you simply unlikely to even see fielded by a potential enemy in modern air combat. Those numbers are only potentially likely in a WW3 scenario, and even that's unlikely considering how many ways we have to cripple aircraft on the ground.
There simply is no longer any scenario in which we do NOT have complete air dominance over any enemy country.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Two letters...
U 2
At which point the industry will present their "new improved" model (at twice the cost, naturally)
The F-35 is not an air superiority craft. I imagine the F-22s will clear the way, absolutely obliterating anything in front of them. There is nothing today that even approaches the air-to-air lethality of the F-22.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
(Sorry, only good clip I could find was of the dub, but when Isamu speaks, it worth mentioning he is voiced by a young Bryan Cranston.)
There's a whole world of bigotry out there that doesn't revolve around racism. Sure, it's typically used in association with easy visual targets, like the color of one's skin or gender, but bigotry can also crop up with regard to sexual orientation, nationalism, wealth, cultural trends (those hipster, amIright?), political orientation, or really anything at all. As soon as you carry negative associations with a group or label, you've engaged in bigotry whenever you deal with that someone of that group. Me? I detest salesmen. Even the nicest of people, if introduced as a salesmen, get the stinkeye from me. What can I say, we all have issues.
You could quite easily argue that the presumed bigotry from the above post is targeted towards military involvement. Considering he has two references to the "war-mongering military industrial complex". Or kings, as he has two references to that as well.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say is: Fuck you and your "you played the race card" card.
Of course, saying that he "doesn't suffer bigoted fools lightly" is a little ironic. "Not suffering [group]" pretty much makes him a bigot himself. It's not that bad of an irony though. I mean, really, bigots. Fuck'em.
/rant on fuck this crap, people... fuck all this military shit...seriosuly..we need other things in this world, not this nonsense... we could have free housing and food for everyone...they are not privileges..they are what everyone needs and should have. Work is just slavery and you know that, money is the ultimate enslavement tool. Wake up people.... fuck the 1% and their war shit.. and fuck religion fanatics too...
What does a physically limited human in a helmet in the cockpit bring to the battle that a physically remote human in a helmet cannot do? Is the extra "situation awareness" brought about by the kinesthetic sense and the millisecond lag caused by speed-of-signal issues worth the extra cost of making an expensive toy for pilots over making a slightly less expensive toy for armchair warriors? Do we really expect the on-site human to be able to whip that $600K helmet off, squint Dirty Harry style and squeeze of a few thousand well placed rounds into a target that cannot be seen without the enhancements of that helmet? When I was AF, I'd have raised these issues and probably been told what I was told then, the remote sensing and control technology just is not up to the task.
"Prove it" says I, and I would invoke the post WWI demonstration bombing that got Billy Mitchell in trouble.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
Just like strapping an Oculus Rift, to the back of a turkey.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
"The F-35 is not an air superiority craft."
That's correct. It's supposed to be the _CHEAP_ folllowup when the F22s have done their job.
Even if everything worked, it was too expensive even before the costs started spiralling.
... with built-in shades that drop automatically when a BSOD is detected.
-alex-
you have to think in Russian! :)
Engage 24 enemy airfighters with what? I read "two internal bays with two pylons each". You can add exterior weapons but then the plane is even less stealth. Agile is not a problem as it is never a good flyer.
You must have missed where I said a typical "flight of four" aircraft.
The F22 is currently capable of carrying 6 missiles (typically the larger AAMRAM) internally in the main bay and 2 Sidewinders (1 each) in the smaller side bays. In addition it has 2 hardpoints under each wing, each of which can carry an additional 2 Missiles, for a total of 8 additional missiles. That's a maximum loadout of 16 AA missiles, at the cost of stealth capability.
So for a flight of four F22s you're looking at a typical "At Range Engagement Capabilty" of as many 32 enemy aircraft, and up to 64 aircraft if they're loaded for bear. And that's not including the aircraft's dogfight ability using its 20mm cannon.
The F35 is currently equipped with 2 internal bays capable of carrying 2 missiles each (and is already planned on being expanded to 3 each), as well as 2 underwing hardpoints, and wingtip rails. this combines for a maximum current AA loadout of 8 AAMRAMs and 2 sidewinders.
So even the F35, for a typical flight of four aircraft, in an all AA loadout, can engage as many as 40 enemy aircraft.
And the F35 still packs a 25mm cannon as well.
(and even if you want to factor in countermeasures and get real nitty gritty, the numbers are still impressive)
And your opinion on its maneuverabilty is frankly ignorant.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.