F-35 Pilots Will Begin Flying Improved 'Gen 3' Helmet 21 Jan 2014 Bill Carey, AINonline
"F-35 test pilots will begin flying this year with a third-generation helmet mounted display system (HMDS) that incorporates modifications to the earlier-generation display system, which the Pentagon has identified as an F-35 program risk. The fixes the fighter program developed for the “Gen 3” helmet system persuaded the Pentagon’s F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) to stop funding an alternate helmet-mounted display.
“I definitely have confidence that we are on the right track; we have the right plan for these fixes in place,” said Marine Lt. Col. Matthew Kelly...
...An ISIE 11 sensor based on Intevac Photonics’ patented electron bombarded activated pixel sensor (EBAPS) technology brings the system’s night-vision acuity closer to the 20/20 vision NVGs can provide....
...The Gen 2 helmet system’s latency, or response time at importing DAS imagery—measured in milliseconds—was not the problem testers thought it would be, Kelly said. Pilots just hadn’t had the opportunity to use the DAS sensor array during flight testing. Test pilots experienced display jitter in areas of the F-35 flight envelope that hadn’t been approved for training, he said. The program addressed the problem by integrating micro inertial measurement units and filtering algorithms in the HMDS to cancel out jitter effects. Pilots flew the fixes using a modified Gen 2 helmet.
“It’s still not perfect, but it’s the 95-percent solution and the major issue there is resolved,” Kelly said."
F-35 Pilots Will Begin Flying Improved 'Gen 3' Helmet | Aviation International News