“LOOK AND SHOOT” HELMETS

“The look of death” is how I would have described the gaze you get if you’re silly enough to step on the Defense Tech girlfriend’s mod­u­lar, ultra-​​chic, asym­met­ric couch. No longer. Not since I heard about the Air Force’s lat­est gagdet: a hel­met that lets a pilot lock on foes — just by star­ing at them. Now that, my friends, is a look of death.
The Pentagon handed out a $86 mil­lion con­tract on Friday to Boeing, to build 2,000 of these Joint Helmet-​​Mounted Cueing Systems (JHMCS). The first 250 units will be ready by next March, the com­pany says. Eventually, pilots of Air Force and Air National Guard F-​​15 Eagles, USAF F-​​16 Fighting Falcons, U.S. Navy F/​A-​​18E/​F Super Hornets will all get the tar­get­ing sys­tems.
“First used in Operation Iraqi Freedom, JHMCS gives pilots the abil­ity to rapidly acquire and des­ig­nate a tar­get sim­ply by look­ing at it,” accord­ing to a Boeing state­ment. “By putting an aim­ing cross, which is pro­jected on the hel­met visor, over the desired tar­get and press­ing a but­ton, the pilot can quickly and eas­ily aim the weapons and sen­sors to des­ig­nate and attack air­borne or ground targets.”

This not only makes the pilot and air­craft more lethal, but it also makes them more sur­viv­able because it reduces the time the pilot and air­craft are exposed to poten­tial enemy fire. JHMCS also dis­plays air­craft alti­tude, air­speed, g’s and angle of attack on the visor, as well as tac­ti­cal infor­ma­tion, to increase the pilot’s aware­ness of the state of his air­craft and the com­bat situation. 

That’s all nice. But what hap­pens if a pilot hap­pens to wink in the wrong direc­tion? Or if some­one steps on her chi-​​chi new couch?

June 15th, 2004 | Uncategorized | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.