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The F-35's $400k helmet

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The F-35's $400k helmet

#61

Post by angdis »

furyg3 wrote: post #25

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 signin…

A quote for something like this would be a waste of time. The "rules" are obviously different military hardware projects that have strategic significance: you either need it or you don't and if you have to ask "how much?", you can't afford it !

Re: The F-35's $400k helmet

#62

Post by JonFish85 »

skeuomorf wrote: post #49

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

You mean a project that has to try to be everything to everyone is a failure? Say it ain't so! This isn't a shot at you, by any means; it's more a shot at a government program that was destined to fail long before it started. You can't have a 4-wheeler ATV, a tank, a station wagon and an SUV built in the same frame. There are some overlaps, sure, but trying to satisfy each requirement leads to insane conflicts that really can't be remedied in a good way. Thus you get this cludgy, massively over budget product that satisfies no one. And on top of it all, nobody wants to be the politician that's responsible for losing 10,000 jobs for his district, so it lives on.

Re: The F-35's $400k helmet

#63

Post by Goronmon »

smackfu wrote: post #59
skeuomorf wrote: post #49

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

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/pierre-spreys-anti-f-35-dia...

I love one of the comments to that article that basically says that the accuracy of Sprey's statements don't matter as long as he is right about the F-35 not being worth the money and time invested.

Re: The F-35's $400k helmet

#64

Post by gaius »

klodolph wrote: post #6
curiously wrote: post #2

all I can say is holy crap. but wonder if this can translate into increased situational awareness or just more distractions

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.

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

Re: The F-35's $400k helmet

#65

Post by JohnBooty »

sschueller wrote: post #5

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

The good news is that war kills less people than it used to. Paradoxically, these fantastically lethal killing machines might be actually preventing deaths.

The US/Iraq war and occupation lasted about a decade and there were less than 200,000 direct combat deaths. Contrast with WWII, in which there were quite a few individual battles with greater death tolls... between one and two million people died in the Battle of Stalingrad alone.

Advanced military technology might be one reason why death tolls have decreased. Advanced superpowers with advanced military technology don't wage full-scale wars against each other because the results would mutually assured destruction. And smaller, poorer countries don't dare to engage the larger ones with advanced technology because the outcome would be lopsided destruction of the smaller country's forces.

Don't get me wrong. Even a single death is too much. The world still sucks and there's too much violence. And the ultimate end price of this advanced killing technology might be that we ruin the planet with nuclear weapons someday.

Re: The F-35's $400k helmet

#66

Post by JohnBooty »

plug wrote: post #26
trhway wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ) with 100Kg cluster warheads rains over the center of large city (Donetsk) ... i wish that US give Ukraine high-precis…

I'm not convinced that high tech war machinery precludes collateral damage - to use that stomach-churning phrase. I appreciate your point on one hand - conventional weapons can be inaccurate and that can result in tragic, horrifying mistakes. But, I'm not aware of any high tech war technology that explicitly tries to prevent risk of injury to non-combatants. The only thing that stops civilians from being fired on is…

  > A weapon is a weapon, and it can be easily used
  > negligently - or malevolently.
It's plainly obvious that, all other things (like the negligence/malevolence) being equal, some weapons are far more indiscriminate than others.

Something like a guided cruise missile is designed to destroy a single building. There can be operator error, and obviously you could intentionally (malevolently) target a civilian building with one.

But compare that to the technology we had sixty years ago: squadrons of huge bomber planes carrying hundreds of unguided bombs.

One of those things is clearly an order of magnitude less likely to cause unintended collateral damage than the other.

There are certainly downsides to the modern technology. One much-discussed one is that cruise missiles and drones give some countries a god-like ability to reign targeted death on others, without putting their own people at risk. Say what you will about the horrors of WWII bombers dropping bombs on populated cities; at least the countries dropping bombs had some skin in the game.

Overall, though, I'll take it.

Re: The F-35's $400k helmet

#67

Post by josefresco »

skeuomorf wrote: post #49

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

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.

Re: The F-35's $400k helmet

#68

Post by happyscrappy »

jacquesm wrote: post #48
venomsnake wrote: post #8

> 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.

Good news for those whose life depends on it's not functioning.

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

Re: The F-35's $400k helmet

#69

Post by greedo »

Htsthbjig wrote: post #19
klodolph wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: The F-35's $400k helmet

#70

Post by cpursley »

trhway wrote: post #7
sschueller wrote: post #5

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

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 ) with 100Kg cluster warheads rains over the center of large city (Donetsk) ... i wish that US give Ukraine high-precis…

" i wish that US give Ukraine high-precision weapons so those weapons would be used instead."

Are you absolutely bonkers? I live just far enough outside of a major US city where I'd die a slow miserable death from the fallout.

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