In less economically dominant nations than the United States, large purchases of military technology tend to get a lot more attention. In Australia, for instance, a $12 billion purchase of 72 super-advanced F-35 fighter
has sparked a major political scandal. But an even smaller number has been turning heads recently: $55 million. That’s about how much Australia will have to spend to outfit each of its F-35’s with a
helmet, which cost $770,000 each.
This helmet is necessary for the fighter to fly, and incorporates some of the most advanced sensing and display technology in the world. The F-35 helmet is truly a next-generation piece of headgear, offering, as Air Force Gen. Mike Hostage
, “a God’s-eye-view” of the ground.
The helmet can do this because its function is integrated into the very design of the plane itself. Unlike pretty much every tactical fighter produced in recent memory, the F-35 does not feature a heads-up display (HUD) in the plane itself, but leaves that function entirely to the helmet. This means that the plane is far more difficult to fly effectively (basically impossible) without the helmet, but it also means that the HUD is visible no matter where the pilot is looking. Twist your neck around to get a view of the jet back, up, and to the left, and you can still see the tactical information you need the most. Spy a target and the helmet can display all its vital statistics, from name to distance, and even suggest the best weapon to use at different distances and speeds.
However, pilots have long had HUDs in one form or another, and they’ve always been able to look
up, at least a bit — it’s in looking
down that the F-35’s helmet really breaks new ground. The new F-35’s are each fitted with six Distributed Aperture Systems (DAS), which collect information about the ground below and the air around the fighter plane. This data is then digitized both as video and data, with labels and flight paths layered over as necessary. When a pilot looks down, the helmet mounted display (HMD) lets them see certain information about the ground below. From a target vehicle driving down a highway to a flight path toward a distant airstrip, pilots can now extend their situational awareness further than the physical window of the plane.
Of course, a visual apparatus this advanced can’t just be snapped on like a common
– each of the helmets has to be custom moulded to the particular pilot thanks to a detailed 3D head scan, and thus cannot be worn by anyone else. Engineers take very precise pupillary measurements so the helmet can be built to keep the display in view no matter how the pilot looks about. This means that if a pilot retires, they can’t just pass their helmet on to the next recruit; Australians will be on the hook to pay for a replacement. If it were
me, that’s where I would start arguing that I should be able to take the
home with me when I retire, but knowing the military they’d probably get all uptight about it.
The amount of internal communication in the plane is rather incredible. The helmet is doing dynamic head- and eye-tracking to figure out what it must display, then querying the external sensors on the particular information it needs to display, processing that information to add HUD elements like target indicators and friend-or-foe labels, and displaying that information in real time.
It does seem as though the modern F-35 pilot is gearing up to be something for a cyber-warrior, bridging the gap between the physical air force and the drone brigades. Once “real” pilots have gotten used to seeing most of the surrounding environment as green wire-frames anyway, well, might as well do it within a half-hour’s drive of home.