The helmet has the almost creepy capability of following the pilot’s gaze. A pilot can either tap a touchscreen on the cockpit avionics panel or press a single button on the F-35 control stick to choose among three feeds: real-time video of what’s going on outside, thermal imagery, or night vision. Whereas fighter pilots once checked a head-up display on a fighter’s windscreen for information such as airspeed, heading, altitude, rate of climb, and information about other aircraft-friend and foe-in the same piece of sky, the F-35 pilot sees all this and more on the helmet visor. It combines a sensor suite, night-vision technology, an information-packed display system, line-of-sight tracking based on head movement, and targeting software-all designed to give pilots a god-like view: everything, everywhere, for the pilot to select to avoid sensory overload. Wired magazine tried out “head unit.” The Economist: “Top Gun’s Topper.” Whatever it’s called, the thing is loaded. Calling this thing a helmet is really…we’ve got to come up with a new word.” “It’s an interpretation of the battle space. “The helmet is much more than a helmet, the helmet is a workspace,” he said of the headgear invented for pilots of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II. Want to write for Task & Purpose? Learn more here and be sure to check out more great stories on our homepage.At a 2015 press briefing, Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark A. This airman’s common sense idea made life easier for the most overworked job in the Air Force.‘They saved our marriage’ - This is what happens when Army leaders actually put people first.Videos reveal moldy, disgusting Camp Lejeune barracks where Marines are forced to live.The Marine Corps wants junior Marines to have a say in who their leaders are.Soldier risks career to donate kidney to retired buddy.Mission failure: West Point cadets reportedly abduct the wrong goat in attempt to steal Navy’s mascot.Marine Corps plan calls for some future Marines to skip boot camp.They’ve gone through this helmet and made everything seamless for the pilot.” More great stories on Task & Purpose “Every little piece of equipment you have, you want to make sure it’s updated so you can be as lethal and capable as possible. The NGFWH is currently being tested by F-22 fighter pilots, Lee said, with B-1 bomber pilots next on the list. Originally, more than 100 concepts were in the running, Rietdyk said, but now just two remain: LIFT and GenTex, the maker of the 55/P, which has a next-generation helmet in the race. Should the NGFWH be accepted, it will be the standard helmet for all fixed-wing Air Force aviators except for F-35 pilots, who already have their own cutting-edge helmet. The Air Force started taking crowd-sourced user suggestions back in 2018, and private companies ran with the ideas from there. The process to find a new helmet has been going on for some time now. Guido Rietdyk, the president of LIFT Airborne Technologies, which created the NGFWH, said testing is scheduled to complete in late 2023, with a production contract to commence sometime in 2024. With so much high praise, you might expect the Air Force to have bought a bunch of the Next Generation Fixed-Wing Helmets in bulk by now, but that hasn’t happened yet. It sucks going on helmet and not having that.” “At least in the Herk the David Clark or Bose noise cancelling headsets make a big difference. “What would be really nice is noise canceling,” the C-130 “Hercules” engine noise, the navigator said. There are different activation settings pilots can choose, but Lee demonstrated using a short clench, followed by a long clench, to activate the pair of lights on his helmet. Unlike those past ideas, the next-gen helmet is activated by a button which gets pressed by the pilot’s jaw muscles when he or she clenches their jaw. Some pilots tried strapping lights to their fingers, or wearing tongue-activated lights on their oxygen masks, but Lee found those solutions clunky or unappealing. In the past, pilots brought flashlights to read flight documents, but that meant they had to take a hand off their flight controls to hold the flashlight. Those lights help with reading maps or other documents inside the cockpit, but that’s not the cool part. Lee said his favorite feature of the new helmet is a pair of lights mounted to its sides. Air Force photo/Airman 1st Class Ryan Conroy)Ĭonvenience, comfort and mission preparedness go hand-in-hand and all the way down in the NGFWH. 15, 2014, at Aviano Air Base, Italy (U.S. Matthew Alexander, 555th Fighter Squadron pilot, tests the seal on his lightweight HGU-55/P Combat Edge pilot helmet, Oct.
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