Helmet-mounted displays

Nothing really of note in this article except price and comfort of HMDS & a Billie Flynn quote & NIGHT VIZ accolade.

F-35 helmet will give pilot tactical information faster
01 Aug 2015 Phillip Swarts

"...The helmets pilots wear include an advanced heads-up-display and the ability to see “through” the floor of the fighter. The helmet, built by Rockwell Collins, costs about $400,000, and every F-35 pilot gets his own personalized model.

“Kind of like with the airplane, the helmet is a pretty big leap in technology,” said Lt. Col. Michael Gette, commander of the 61st Fighter Squadron, which is training operational pilots for the F-35.

“We’re trying to do things with the helmet that’s never been done before,” he told Air Force Times.

That includes putting the fighter’s heads-up-display on the helmet itself, projected onto the visor in front of the pilot’s eyes.

Lockheed Martin, prime contractor for the F-35, claims having the HUD on the visor allows the pilot to immediately see information like speed, altitude, distance to target, and a host of other factors.

“It allows him to see everything that’s of concern to him — his allies and his threats — above the horizon in the air-to-air arena,” said Billie Flynn.

But in order to have the visual clarity so each pilot can read the information, the cameras in the helmet that project the display have to be fine-tuned specifically for each pilot....

...Gette noted the technology has been most effective when paired with night-vision capabilities.

“We have been using it on our night sorties here and it’s been effective,” he said. “You can maintain awareness of ground features, what the weather is on the ground.”

There’s an added bonus for the helmet, too, Gette said.

“It’s the most comfortable helmet I’ve ever worn,” he said. “You wear it the whole sortie long; you don’t even know you have it on.”

Source: http://www.airforcetimes.com/story/mili ... /30842897/

As a nit picking device (no not my index finger) I would settle on under 400K dollars [between 300 & 400K?] for the HMDS instead of the more robust 700K - 800K dollars that is bandied around earlier. So anyway...

VMFA-121 out on flight line and ready to fly off
03 Aug 2015 Kevin G. Andrade Yuma Sun Staff

"...Another feature of note is the helmet that pilots wear while conducting in-flight operations. It costs about $320,000, which is down from the $790,000 price tag they began with according to VMFA-121...."

Source: http://www.yumasun.com/news/vmfa--out-o ... 88a4d.html

Finally.
http://www.kcrg.com/subject/news/govern ... t-20150811

Rockwell Collins marks F-35 milestone
Company beginning delivery of third-generation helmet
CEDAR RAPIDS — Rockwell Collins on Tuesday marked delivery of the first third-generation helmet-mounted display system for pilots flying the F-35, the nation's most advanced fighter jet.

The high tech helmet, specially fitted to each pilot, provides them with 360-degree situational awareness and allows them to “look through” the aircraft. The jet's Distributed Aperture System, made by Northrop Grumman, streams real-time images from six infrared cameras mounted around the aircraft to the helmet.

More at the jump.

What's the plan for replacing Gen I and II already in service?

Phil Jasper is a naughty boy for saying this [do I have to explain?] and LRIP aircraft will have to be updated to take the Gen III HMDS - I forget which LRIP can take it (the latest?). This info will be in the thread meanwhile I post this quote:

"...Phil Jasper, executive vice president and COO of Rockwell Collins Government Systems, said the company expects to provide thousands of the high tech helmets for the F-35. “Every pilot gets their own helmet and generations of pilots will be trained for the F-35 program,” Jasper said....”

The helmets can be recycled for new users with new moulded inserts for a new individual (after taking out the olden).

Here is the old news: viewtopic.php?f=62&t=16223&p=286455&hilit=LRIP#p286455

Selected Acquisition Report (SAR)
Dec 2013 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Aircraft (F-35) As of FY 2015 President's Budget

Executive Summary...
“...One critical challenge the program made head way on in 2013 was the HMDS. For more than two years, the program worked with industry teammates to conduct dedicated flight tests and develop solutions to address the helmet's technical challenges. Those issues that hampered helmet function have been resolved, and the unit cost of the helmet system has decreased. As a result of testing and mitigation of the HMDS issues, the parallel development of an alternate helmet has been terminated. The current helmet has been deemed acceptable to support USMC IOC in 2015, and the Generation 3 helmet - to be introduced to the fleet in LRIP Lot 7 in 2016 - will meet program requirements to complete test and development in 2017. The Generation 3 helmet will include an improved night vision camera, new Liquid-Crystal Displays, automated alignment, and software improvements. The downselect to the current HMDS also resulted in a price guarantee that reduced the overall cost of the HMDS by 13 percent for the next five years ....”

PHOTO: http://www.kcrg.com/storyimage/KC/20150 ... 819959.jpg

Source: http://www.scribd.com/document_download ... ension=pdf (0.7Mb) (97 pages)

The Gen III helmet should roll out with the LRIP 7 and onwards. Maybe the LRIP 6, which has the Block 3F hardware, is also more or less ready for adopting it.

I'm puzzled by that "first gen III delivered". Do they mean delivered as part of production for operational units? Because testing of the Gen III was already ongoing, was it not? That means it must have been already delivered to some of the test aircraft, no...?

Is it known how generation II and III compares size wise, and also to the JHMD used on other USAF fighters?

I'm obviously thinking about the reported issue with space for the pilot and helmet to rotate inside the cockpit.

I'd like to own the patent to the Law of Gravity myself.

http://www.law360.com/articles/681280/d ... elmet-tech

DOD Defeats IP Suit Over F-35 Fighter Pilot Helmet Tech
ew York (July 20, 2015, 11:17 PM ET) -- The U.S. Department of Defense on Monday shot down a patent infringement suit over the helmet-mounted motion tracking system used by F-35 fighter pilots, when a U.S. federal claims judge ruled that an aerospace helmet maker can’t patent the mathematical equations used by the device...
Judge Wheeler said Monday that Thales' mathematical equations incorporating Isaac Newton's principles of motion did not transform sensor data into so-called "motion tracking information" as the company claimed.

“Contrary to plaintiff’s characterizations, the data is not fed into one side of a machine and pushed out the other as something new,” the court said. “Instead the tracking information is derived from mathematical calculations based on a combination of the sensor data and natural laws of motion.”

I do not recall reading any helmet size change between iterations and I'll guess this is the 'cleared for production' HMDS III and not a test HMDS III.

This explains the senators helmet hair: http://www.kcrg.com/storyimage/KC/20150 ... 819959.jpg "Sen. Joni Ernst moves her head from side to side as she observes the virtual head-up display seen in the an F-35 Gen III Helmet Mounted Display System during a demonstration at Rockwell Collins in northeast Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Tuesday, August 11, 2015. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)"

(EDITOR’S NOTE: As its name implies, this is the third iteration of the F-35’s helmet, developed because the previous two versions failed to meet specified performance.
This was a particularly critical failing because the helmet is designed to provide all the data the pilot needs, and on the assumption it would work the aircraft was designed without a head-up display.)

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articl ... splay.html


I'm SHOCKED.

Who would have thought that problems could be found during a weapon system development phase and that finding a "final" solution is somehow a failure in and of itself.

Some foot stamping going on there I guess. This is a tidbit from the PR release from Rockwell re-iterated by DefAirO above:

"...Overall, Rockwell Collins has built and fit more than 200 helmets for F-35 pilots who are being trained for the program...." (Source: Rockwell Collins; issued August 11, 2015) https://www.rockwellcollins.com/Data/Ne ... 7-F35.aspx

Four views of a helmet here (given the date on photo - ‎April‎ ‎3‎, ‎2015 - we can guess it is HMDS III?): https://www.flickr.com/photos/lockheedm ... 1647189016 & INFO here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/lockheedm ... 1647189016 (Go here for front and side view)

OTHER side view: https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8741/170 ... 2f_o_d.jpg
&
REAR view: https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8739/170 ... c2_o_d.jpg

Rockwell Collins Delivers F-35 Generation III Helmet; Aircraft's Gatling Gun Tested
21 Aug 2015 Yasmin Tadjdeh

"...The new version [HMDS III] resolves a number of issues that were present in past iterations of the helmet, McKillip said.

Previously, pilots had complained about a “green glow” that obstructed their view. McKillip said that issue has largely been fixed in the Generation III system.

The problem arises from the contrast ratio in the helmet’s display system, he said.

“Contrast ratio is the ratio between the part of the display you want and then the background luminous,” he said. “There’s always some amount of background light that comes through the display, so you can never quite eliminate that.”

Although the green glow can never go away completely, “we made it significantly better,” he said.

For now, the company doesn’t know of any major issues with the system, McKillip said. “The testing looks good. We may learn more as it is fielded, and not only just initial fielding but as it goes out across different services and flies at different places around the world,” he said.

The Generation III system is a touch heavier than its predecessor, weighing approximately 5 pounds. Rockwell Collins is researching ways to reduce the helmet’s weight by about 10 percent, McKillip said.

Going forward, Rockwell Collins will make small tweaks to the system. “We’ve already resolved many of the big issues so now we’re working on smaller things,” he said.

It has been reported by some news organizations that the helmet system alone costs more than $400,000 on the already immensely expensive Lockheed Martin-built aircraft, but McKillip disputed that number. He would not disclose the cost of the helmet, but said it was “dramatically” less expensive than previous versions." [I'm going for $300K Buehler]

Source: http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/ ... a2&ID=1926

An attractive headline with some outrageous HMDS cost estimates (I guess nothing new there) with a nice quote from the nonWelshman at the end. What's not to like? NOTE THE COST QUOTE FOR THE TYPHOID HELMUT BELOW!

Air Force: F-35 Helmet is a ‘Workspace,’ Not a Helmet
25 Aug 2015 Brendan McGarry

"The U.S. Air Force wants to use another word to describe the expensive, high-tech helmet that can “see through” windowless parts of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

When asked about the price tag for the pilot gear — which has ranged from $400,000 to $800,000 apiece — Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said he didn’t know its unit cost and that it won’t be finalized until the hardware enters production.

But he did have this to say about the technology:

“The helmet is much more than a helmet, the helmet is a work space,” he said. “It’s an interpretation of the battle space, it’s situational awareness. This is a — calling this thing a helmet is really — we’ve got to come up with a new word.”...

...The Helmet Mounted Display System made by Rockwell Collins Inc. was previously estimated to cost about $500,000 apiece....

...But the helmet has still had bugs. When a news team from the CBS News program, “60 Minutes,” visited the Marine Corps station last year in Yuma, Arizona, a helmet malfunction caused a scheduled flight to be scrubbed. [Oh the HORROR]

Welsh said he hasn’t heard concerns from pilots that the helmet is distracting or too complicated.

“All the people flying the airplane, from the time I came into this job three years ago and started asking about the problems I kept hearing about with the helmet, not a single one of them has said yeah, I don’t want to use it,” he said. “It’s pretty — it’s a pretty incredibly capability, and they adapt very quickly to it.”"

Source: http://defensetech.org/2015/08/25/air-f ... -a-helmet/

A commenter to this article has pointed out the 'cost' of a TYPHOID Helmut (yes I know) a bonus from earlier efforts for various aircraft also but anyway.... http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/06/2 ... 3K20110624 "...Costing about 250,000 pounds apiece..." [392,835.00 US Dollar]