WHAT A HELMET THIS IS. THE HELMET IS USED WITH THE F-35
The
Terminator-style helmets that allow fighter pilots to see through their planes
by MATTHEW HICKLEY. Only the neck and shoulders prove there is a human being in
there somewhere.
This is how the
next generation of RAF fighter pilots will look. And with piercing green
eyes staring out from behind the visor, it's no surprise that the helmet has
been compared to Arnold Schwarzenegger's killer robot in The Terminator.
Pilots flying
the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will have an astonishing array of technology
encasing their heads - enabling them to see right through their own aircraft
fuselage to the ground below.
Scroll down for more ...
A series of
cameras on the outside of the stealth warplane feed high-resolution images into
the helmet, including infra-red images at night, which are then projected on to
the inside of the pilot's visor.
Special sensors inside the cockpit track the movement of the helmet, so that
when the pilot turns his head his view of the skies or ground outside changes
accordingly.
When he looks
down he sees not his own feet on the cockpit floor but the ground below,
slipping past at hundreds of miles per hour.
On-board
computers also feed in essential flight and combat data on to the display, as
well as superimposing target symbols to locate enemy and friendly aircraft or
ground targets, even if they are too far away to see with the naked eye.
The supersonic
Joint Strike Fighter is due to replace the Harrier jump jet, and is being
developed jointly with
Scroll down for more ...
Cutting-edge:
Cameras are attached to the outside of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to give
pilots all-round vision. Prototypes were used in flight by
A Ministry of
Defence spokesman said: 'The computerised symbology will be displayed directly
on to the pilot's visors, providing the pilot with cues for flying, navigating
and fighting the aircraft.
'It even will
superimpose infra-red imagery on to the visor to allow the pilot to look
through the cockpit floor at night and see the world below - like something out
of Terminator.'