God's-eye view: The F-35's helmet lets pilots see the battlefield in a radically new way
"It is the only aircraft that has ever had the helmet made in conjunction with the aircraft," said US Air Force Maj. Will "D-Rail" Andreotta, commander of the F-35A Lightning II Heritage Flight Team. "We have so many systems and sensors on the aircraft, so as they were building the F-35 they basically thought about how the helmet would help."
"When I flew an F-16 they basically took an old helmet and put a big computer in front of it," Andreotta said in a recent interview.
With a price tag of $400,000, Lockheed Martin's Helmet Mounted Display Systems (HMDS) is designed to give F-35 pilots unprecedented situational awareness by displaying airspeed, altitude, targeting information, and threat warnings on the helmet's visor.
"Pilots thrive with situational-awareness aids," John "JV" Venable, a retired US Air Force colonel and senior research fellow for defense policy at Heritage Foundation, told Business Insider. "As a pilot, if you can make it simple for me to detect the enemy that's great, and if you can make it simple for me to see the enemy that's even better."
The helmet component connects to the Distributed Aperture System (DAS) system in the aircraft, which gives pilots a God's-eye view of the battlespace.
"I have six cameras around the aircraft called DAS, and with a flip of a switch I can put it to my helmet and have a full 360-degree view of what I'm seeing," Andreotta said.
"Think of Wonder Woman's' invisible airplane, that's exactly what this aircraft has the capability to do because of the HMDS," Venable told Business Insider. "If a pilot needs to he can look between his legs and see through the airplane. That's how extraordinary this aircraft is."
US Air Force Brig. Gen. Scott Pleus, director of the F-35 integration office and former commander of the 56th Fighter Wing at Luke Air Force Base, said that tasks in the F-35 cockpit are "unbelievably simplified" due to the helmet.
"There's no focusing, changing batteries. There's no getting things on and off in the cockpit. There's one button you press on the stick and it turns on," said Pleus, who has flown both the F-16 and F-35.
"You just climb to the airplane like you would normally do. You turn on the helmet like you normally do, and all you do is turn the night-vision camera on when you're ready to have your night-vision camera, and when you're done you turn it off. That's it."
Here's how Pleus described the process of switching to night vision in a traditional flying helmet:
Pleus also noted that the night-vision camera built into the F-35's helmet gives pilots almost double the field view of standard night-vision goggles.
Disclosure: Amanda has family who work at Lockheed Martin, a company she regularly covers.