
The F-35's $400k helmet - blueatlas
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/04/01/meet-the-most-fascinating-part-of-the-f-35-the-400000-helmet/
======
furyg3
It's a very 'agile' project. When will it be done? Don't ask! How much will it
cost? Who knows! It's going to be awesome, though!

But... you don't have to wait to see how powerful this weapons system is. The
F-35 completely took out the Dutch government before one even rolled off the
assembly line!

Note to governments: when ordering your weapons systems it may be a good idea
to get a cost-per-unit quote before signing.

~~~
rayiner
Defense systems go over-budget for the same reason software projects do--it's
all custom and custom development is unpredictable. It's not like these
companies can sell the U.S. stuff they had lying around having developed it
for another customer.

I used to do development for a DOD project. At the outset of the project, it's
often not clear what you're trying to do will even work. It might not even be
clear what you should be trying to do. It's an iterative process of the
government telling the engineers what it wants, and the engineers going back
to the government with what can be done. That's not the say that projects like
the F-35 weren't badly managed. But even well-managed defense projects are
unpredictable.

The world just looks very different when you can't count on massive consumer
volumes to amortize R&D. Imagine going to Apple and saying "we need you to
develop the iPhone, and oh by the way we will order at most a few thousand of
these. What'll be the unit cost?"

~~~
makmanalp
> I used to do development for a DOD project. At the outset of the project,
> it's often not clear what you're trying to do will even work. It might not
> even be clear what you should be trying to do.

Doesn't this just sound like the contractor promising things it can't deliver?
This seems like one of the major endemic problems, especially with
ridiculously advanced projects like this.

R&D is R&D. Contracts are contracts. Research, by nature, fails often.
Contracts, by nature, are expected to succeed. You can't (or rather shouldn't)
sign a contract for something that you don't know you can do, let alone
whether you can do it within the time / money limits. To me, that seems
borderline fraudulent, and is a form of lock-in. The clients don't know
they're getting screwed, but when they finally do know, it's too expensive for
them to switch contractors and they're stuck with you.

Obviously it's partially an incentives issue - it's economically rational for
companies to do that. It's also probably a rational career move for officers
to pitch a super-mega-awesome device that doesn't exist yet but sounds
awesome. So that needs to change.

What happened to trying before buying? I have a sense that this used to be the
case pre-WW2 but I don't really have any proof to back that up.

~~~
rayiner
The issue is that the U.S.G. is the only buyer for most of this stuff, or
tightly controls who else buys it through export restrictions. So if the
government wants technology that does X, Y, and Z, it has to pay someone to
develop it. Who is going to sit around building this technology in advance of
its _only customer_ wanting to buy it? And everyone knows that. A DOD contract
isn't a purchase order for 10,000 iPhones. It's a joint-venture where the
government foots the R&D risk to get a product that doesn't exist yet.

It's actually a lot like when Apple gets Foxconn to build iPhones. For stuff
like its aluminum manufacturing process, Apple takes the R&D risk, because
there aren't a bunch of other customers wanting to buy these products to
Apple's spec.

~~~
makmanalp
> Who is going to sit around building this technology in advance of its only
> customer wanting to buy it?

Ok, so that's a fair point, but we don't really owe these companies a viable
business model.

What happened to funding DARPA and NRL and Lincoln Labs and other places
instead of private companies for the research portion? What happened to
funding real research instead of funding an amorphous combination of research
and delivery?

Those two things could still be separate. We could have a ton of competing
research designs, and when some of them yield working prototypes, /then/ we
can decide whether to pour hundreds of billions into building them.

> It's a joint-venture where the government foots the R&D risk to get a
> product that doesn't exist yet.

You're suggesting this is more kickstarter than amazon, basically. Which is
fine. But if the government was 100% aware that there was risk, why aren't
they hedging their bets like any sane investor should? It sure looks like they
went all-in on the F-35, for example.

~~~
monknomo
Most government agencies that do 'research' funnel grant and contract money to
private entities. Having scientists or building things directly is 'communism'
and we're against that. After all, a government employee manages to be both
expensive and incompetent, so why not save money by hiring contractors to do
their work? /s

I think going all in on the F-35 has to do with the some kind of power
struggle between the air force and the army. The F-35 is the air force's baby,
but it's a ground support role, which means the army is the organization that
benefits from it. It's ground support as the air force prefers: fast,
stealthy, light, in-and-out and not as the army prefers: slow, heavily armed,
lingering for hours. As far as I can tell, the air force doesn't really care
to do ground support the way the army would prefer. I assume they resent the
idea that they're a support organization and not the principal actors. I don't
know, maybe it's tied up in the old idea that pilots are the knights of the
skies?

Of course, I'm no expert - everything I know I learned here:

[http://www.jqpublicblog.com/lying-win-air-force-
misrepresent...](http://www.jqpublicblog.com/lying-win-air-force-
misrepresents-combat-records-campaign-retire-10/)

here:

[http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/01/a-10-f-35-air-
force-...](http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/01/a-10-f-35-air-force-budget)

and here:

[http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2014/12/fa...](http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2014/12/fallows_chart/35e182a0b.png)
[http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/12/the-
trag...](http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/12/the-tragedy-of-
the-american-military/383516/)

~~~
rayiner
At least with DARPA it's not about communism but wanting to avoid bureaucracy.
They don't even own their own building and program managers are kicked out
after four years. Basically they don't want to become NASA.

~~~
monknomo
It's true that ending up like NASA would be unfortunate, but it seems like
there is a better way. Also, my crack about communism was not meant to be from
DARPS's viewpoint. I see it more that it is easier to fund something that
spreads money to private business across many districts than it is to fund
generic government activity.

------
smegel
> There was a latency in the video, which caused pilots motion sicknes

Just visualizing this makes me feel sick. Imagine executing high-G maneuvers
but seeing an image that doesn't correspond to what you feel...

~~~
klodolph
Intuitively, the view already doesn't correspond to what you see, even if
you're only a commercial pilot. That's why planes have attitude indicators.

~~~
Htsthbjig
It actually does most of the time, when the weather is fine.

Planes have attitude indicators for when you can't see anything,e.g when you
fly inside a cloud.

But you don't need attitude indicators when you can see the horizon.

~~~
greedo
And modern warplanes fight in all-weather conditions as well as night ops on a
normal routine basis. VFR isn't the norm for military aviation.

------
kriro
For a defence company Lockheed Martin is actually a surprisingly good* player
in the VR/AR community and they always have somewhat sane people at
conferences etc. Interestingly they often mentioned fighter pilot helmets as
the best state of the art AR technology but when asked about specifics the
answer was usually..."classified, sorry" which I always thought was kind of
sad.

They were quite involved in the Virtual World project which is open sourced:
[https://github.com/virtual-world-framework/vwf](https://github.com/virtual-
world-framework/vwf)

*from my perspective as someone who thinks building weapons technology is pretty bad and something I'd never do personally

~~~
ohitsdom
Per the article, the helmet isn't built by Lockheed, it's built by Rockwell
Collins.

------
skeuomorf
While the technology in this helmet may turn out to be pretty great, I still
can't view the project as a whole (The F-35) as more than a failure. It's
taken them a lot of time and money to develop a mediocre aircraft, here's
Pierre Sprey's opinion on it (Designer of the F-16) "The F-35 was born of an
exceptionally dumb piece of airforce PR spin"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxDSiwqM2nw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxDSiwqM2nw)

~~~
josefresco
Former pilots, and aircraft engineers are typically very proud of their
machines, relish a more simple time when the pilot mattered more, and won't
hesitate to bash modern technology.

~~~
ckib16
There's some truth to this. But, after you dig through this "bar talk", most
every pilot would take the best technology has to offer when going into a
fight. I'll gladly take a JDAM over a Mk-84 (dumb bomb). And I'll take any
modern fighter over an F-4, etc.

Pilots do complain about technology (which always amuses me), but in the end
we want the technology that helps us win.

------
trynumber9
Coincidentally the same cost as the Eurofigher Typhoon's helmet:
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/24/us-airshow-
helmets...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/24/us-airshow-helmets-
idUSTRE75N52A20110624)

> Costing about 250,000 pounds ($400,100) apiece, the helmets will be deployed
> in all Typhoons, of which Eurofighter has delivered 278 to six air forces
> and has orders for 429 more.

~~~
th3iedkid
Guess this explains why :

>>"Things got so bad that in 2011 the Pentagon hired BAE Systems to build a
back-up helmet in case the one in development couldn’t be rescued"

Particularly why BAE for Typhoon already had it around the same time.

------
flyinglizard
The nice thing about the public scrutiny of the F-35 program, is all this
normally-classified capability information that's released out to the public
to get them excited about the project. Such level of publicity of cutting edge
weapon systems simply didn't exist a decade ago.

~~~
jonsen
It's a smoke screen. In the skunks they are doing a pilotless version.

~~~
tsotha
I doubt that. To take advantage of a drone's capabilities you'd have to start
from ground zero. Eventually they'll make a pilotless version the way they
have pilotless F-16s. So the newer planes have something to shoot at.

------
venomsnake
> The F-35 Lightning II is one of the most complicated weapons systems ever
> developed,

That is the opening sentence. And I will be surprised if it does not send
chills down the spine of any person whose life will somehow depend on that
airplane.

~~~
jacquesm
Good news for those whose life depends on it's _not_ functioning.

~~~
happyscrappy
If your life depends on this not functioning you probably have a very short
lifespan.

~~~
PakG1
I believe he was talking about enemy targets.

~~~
unchocked
So was he.

------
encoderer
What i see here is an old cold-warrior concerned that this fighter jet is not
going to be good at "dog fighting".

Who, exactly, are we supposed to be dog fighting with in next 20 years?

~~~
ckib16
Nobody knows. We usually cannot predict future conflicts very well.

A number of people think Stealth increases the chance for WVR engagements (WVR
= Within Visual Range, or dog fighting). I'm one of them. The U.S. has a bad
history of predicting the end of WVR engagements (see Vietnam and the F-4
produced without internal guns). Air superiority is definitely not a thing
that can be taken for granted. But many people do because the West has
dominated the skies for many decades now.

------
Altenuvian
I'd love to hear John Carmacks' take on this. They had to solve very similar
problems when developing this helmet:

extremely low-latency head & eye-tracking, managing depth-of-field,
integrating multiple input streams, providing non-distracting information
overlays etc.

~~~
supercoder
Yeah, I'd imagine Carmack can take some of the ideas from the solutions
developed in this helmet.

------
sschueller
All this technology just to kill people. It is a sad world we live in.

~~~
trhway
looking at the low tech - WWII style - war in Ukraine with a lot of civil
population and property being hit, intentionally and unintentionally, i'd take
high tech any time over it. For example when a full salvo (16) of unguided
missiles (from "Uragan" system
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BM-27_Uragan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BM-27_Uragan))
with 100Kg cluster warheads rains over the center of large city (Donetsk) ...
i wish that US give Ukraine high-precision weapons so those weapons would be
used instead.

In an interview one Russian tank gun operator was boasting "we had a good tank
- it had night vision"! In 2015! He said 3 tanks out of their team's 12 were
such "good" tanks (and it was regular Russian army unit, not a rebel one). Of
course no laser guided, drones, or any "total battlefield awareness", etc...
Just shoot whatever you see through that night vision (it was their actual
order the night Ukraine forces were making their way out of Debaltsevo
encirclement through the narrow bottleneck while Russian forces were shooting
at them from good positions from both sides)

~~~
Htsthbjig
I wish the US go home instead of seeding war anywhere they go.

I visited Ukraine last month and one of the best things I saw was that war
there was contained and "light" using mostly light weapons.

Russia probably has not the tech the US has, but Europe does, and Europe does
not need a heavy nuclear war or loosing their main energy supplier(Russia).

~~~
briandear
The U.S. invaded The Crimea? Weird. Chechnya, Degestan? The U.S. seeded war in
the Balkans? I remember all those U.S. supplied snipers in Savajevo killing
civilians in Sniper Alley.. How about all of those American made AK-47s being
used across Africa?

I'm not sure how discouraging Russian and Islamic expansionism is somehow
'seeding war.' I don't recall Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait being
'seeded' by the U.S. During the Korean War, it was the Chinese supported North
that attacked the South. How about Tibet? Or pretty much every conflict in
Africa? This "America as invader" meme has no basis in reality or fact. The
U.S. just doesn't sit around throwing darts on maps to pick countries to
invade. We could suggest that countries like France in Africa and Indochina,
the British with Northern Ireland and the Faulklands, the Germans (twice) in
Europe, the Italians in Ethiopia and Libya, the Egyptians in the Six Day war
and the Yom Kippir War.. The U.S. has been the belligerents in very few
conflicts. We could talk about the Cubans in Grenada, the Soviets in
Afghanistan..

The U.S. isn't perfect, but they definitely don't spend their time invading
their neighbors because of some ethnic claim or another. The U.S. is involved
in many places but there's a big difference between getting involved
defensively as opposed to offensive, territorial-grabbing objectives such as
seen in the Ukraine and the Caucasus.

By the way, I am not passing judgement on any country; it's just important to
maintain perspective based on facts and not some knee-jerk assumption.

Ask Poland and the Baltics if they want the U.S. around. Huge majorities would
say yes. Woukd you rather have the US sit in the sidelines while Russia
marches unchecked to the German border?

~~~
warkid
Wow, please, easy mister Obama, nobody's going to take you Peace Prize back!

------
pi-err
From the article:

> a stealthy fighter jet years that is often called a flying computer because
> of its more than 8 million lines of code

For all the critics, all the hate vs drones and leaner fighters and bombers,
the F-35 _is_ an impressive engineering feat and a turning point, especially
re:software.

At some point, a "Snow Leopard" version of the F-35 will turn out as a very
fine piece of equipment, only possibly without the initial cost benefits
expectations. Also: most learnings will probably be lost because the project
will not have a decisive cost/performance advantage despite its complexity.
The plane won't have a successor.

Hopefully we can hear at some point of contractors who worked on its systems.

~~~
revelation
Huh? You can't boot any recent system without running code from software that
totals many lines more than a mere 8 million.

That they keep quoting it really just makes me scared for the people working
there, their worth measured by the lines they contributed to the behemoth as
dictated by people that started in the 70s and never did learn anything new.

~~~
tormeh
Yes, but not made in one go. It's sad that it's a giant piece of C++ fail, but
you can't fault them for ambition.

------
foo1423
Lolz! Who does not recognize this article as complete propagandistic
advertisement for a project completely over in time and budget that even fails
competing with its competitors. Just besides that it's a weapon for killing
people. Wake up.

~~~
briandear
Could you argue it's a weapon for saving people? Over 140 Christian students
in Kenya were just massacred. An F-35 taking out the perpetrator's training
camps could have save a bunch of innocent lives. One of the worst genocides in
history (Rwanda) featured machetes being used to hack millions of people to
death. How great would an F-35 been against the Nazis? How many millions of
people could have been saved?

Weapons aren't evil. Evil is what's evil. Burying one's head in the sand à la
Chamberlain led to the extermination of millions. The Khymer Rouge had no
advanced weaponry and slaughtered millions.

In Gulf War I, 35,000 total deaths, in no small part because of smarter
weapons. An entire country liberated from the Iraqis in just over a month.

How would advanced weaponry have changed the game in wars across history?

Even the Iraq war, which has been one of Anerica's longest has resulted in
about 500,000 deaths. In the much shorter WWI it was 16 million deaths.

High tech weapons save lives. Wars will always happen be it with machetes or
spears or with billion dollar aircraft systems. A world without war would be
nice, but there will always be evil in the hearts of men.

~~~
foo1423
Seriosly I don't believe in such buls... anymore. Save brave chrisian people.
Sorry, but the US has killed and totured so many brave non christian people
just for politics and power-- and if you talk about christians - do you
remember what a brave christian does when he gets beaten?

this world will not get better as long we don't unite and overcome ancient
separation by nation or believe.

------
vacri
_Like the plane, the helmet is enormously expensive. The cost of each custom-
made helmet is more than $400,000._

They've come down in price. When I did my honours at a defence science base in
'96, it was using a helmet obtained "second-hand and shop-soiled" for $600k -
the helmet had a monocle that projected a HUD onto your retina. Apparently it
was an Apache gunship pilot's helmet.

------
Daviey
Aero Glass does a much better job of explaining why augmented reality matters
in aviation: [https://vimeo.com/101826751](https://vimeo.com/101826751)

------
knappador
Wish there was a part of the airplane that wasn't $400k

~~~
damon_c
There are probably very few parts on that plane that are cheaper than 400k.

~~~
tdicola
The pilot. I doubt fighter pilots make $400k/year. Maybe they need to ask for
a raise...

~~~
rurounijones
Training a US fighter pilot costs 7 figures last I heard so they cost that to
purchase, never mind maintenance fees :p

~~~
ckib16
Correct. The U.S. has many retention programs to try to keep pilots serving
past their initial military commitments. There is a lot of money invested into
them.

------
discardorama
So each helmet is custom-made. If you lose the helment (or spill coffee on it
or something), then you can't fly the plane anymore? A small thing like the
helmet will ground a $200M airplane?

~~~
njharman
There's this awesome thing called spare parts and backups.

custom made != only works with one aircraft

~~~
discardorama
But custom-made means that the pilot can't fly, period. And without the pilot,
the aircraft might as well be grounded?

------
puppetmaster3
Congrats to the sales people, I'm impressed!

------
dgudkov
Even if F-35 fails it won't really be a failure, because all the R&D
investment paved a way for a new generation of fighter jets. It's not a faster
horse, it's a car.

------
drussell
Whenever I see headlines like this I think back to Batman Begins when Lucius
Fox says "Bean counters didn't think a soldier's life was worth 300 grand"

------
fapjacks
What a clusterfuck.

------
curiously
all I can say is holy crap.

but wonder if this can translate into increased situational awareness or just
more distractions

~~~
klodolph
It may not matter, because it seems like the F-35 is designed to optimize the
movement of money around the US, and it may turn out to be a very mediocre
military aircraft with very nice electronics.

~~~
gaius
Similarly the British aircraft carriers are designed primarily to shovel money
into the pockets of Gordon Brown's voters.

