SM-6 hits over horizon target using F-35B as sensor

a reply to: Zaphod58

there really isnt any difference between a hud and a display mounted in the helmet. the only difference is the hud goes where u move your head. its still a heads up display just projected into the interior lens on the helmet itself.

a reply to: TheScale

Actually there is. The HUD is fixed, and has a limited visibility area. A Helmet Mounted Display System displays more information, and is capable of doing more than a HUD, and moves with the pilots head. A HUD is integrated into the HMDS, but an HDMS is more than a HUD.

originally posted by: TheScale
a reply to: Zaphod58

there really isnt any difference between a hud and a display mounted in the helmet. the only difference is the hud goes where u move your head. its still a heads up display just projected into the interior lens on the helmet itself.

Your wrong dis playing information on a visor is not thr same. These helmets are virtual meaning that the pilots view is unobstructed by even his console he can see completely around him and technically no cocpit window is neccesary. Have you worn VR goggles think more like that.

a reply to: Zaphod58

id suggest reading about the types of heads-up displays.

en.wikipedia.org...
btw even with the 3rd gen helmets it say its not a "major" problem anymore. that in no way says its not still an issue. im not saying the f-35 is a terrible aircraft but its also not a great aircraft either. just looks at the adversity its faced all through its production. i mean the intent of creating it was to reduce costs. well for 1.5 trillion dollars i think we can say that went out the window long ago. i think there are far better options out there that allready existed to achieve that goal of saving money. for one, keep producing the f-22 and actually bring those costs down by having a significant production lifetime. trying to fill multiple roles that are on different ends of the spectrum is also a bad choice. the navy fought tooth and nail for a twin engine plane but had give in. how many f-35's will get ditched in the ocean due to an engine malfunction. how many pilots might be lost aswell. the one size fits all plan is terrible and historically has always been a bad choice. one thing i wish our military would go back and try again is something along the lines of how they developed the skyhawk. a plane for under a million dollars a pop that kicked ass.

a reply to: dragonridr

lets hope they got the latency issues under control. i did find it funny how they had to go to oculus rift and pay them money for their tech in the hopes of reducing that latency. also yes i have used VR helmets. from the old CRT's mounted in huge helmets that were manipulated by a whole system of wires to the oculus rift and the vive. there is a major issue not being talked about when it comes to that and it is the PPI those systems can achieve. they are far far lower then what a human eye can see. shoot in most cases u can see the individual pixels with huge gaps between them cause they are so low. until they can provide about 16K of res its only going ot be good for a very close encounter, if thats the case the pilot allready screwed up somewhere along the lines.

a reply to: TheScale

I'm well aware of the different types of displays. A HMDS has a HUD integrated into it, but it's more than a HUD, as I said. It works fine as a HUD, but that's like saying Google Glass works as glasses, since it goes over your eye.

The Gen III helmets have all but eliminated the problems of the Gen II helmets.

The $1.5T (which by the way, has dropped to well under $1T, so again, you're using old news) covers the cost of development, production, and 60 years of operations. How much has the B-52 fleet cost us over that amount of time? Or the KC-135 fleet?

As for the single engine argument, how many F-16s have fallen out of the sky on overwater flights? Or while flying around the Arctic? Or any other environment? Engine development has gotten to the point there are engines that have gone over 50,000 hours between overhauls and operated over 10 years without a single hiccup. Yes, a second engine would be helpful when you lose the engine you have, but it's not necessary anymore, and hasn't been for years.

Honestly Zaph, I wouldn't dignify this guy with a response at this point.

a reply to: Zaphod58

u do know about the engine problems theyve had with the f135 and f119 engine's right? not to mention the problems associated with the f-16's engines and them gaining the nickname of a lawndart. also are u saying that producing a new plane to replace the b-52 would be cheaper cause that has been a pretty big part of this argument the whole time? i can say with confidence that developing, testing and producing a new plane to replace the b-52 would cost far more then what its cost to keep it in service for what? 60+ years now. sometimes what u have is good enough for the job.

fyi at one point the engine failures in the f-16 accounted for half of the lost planes. i never said 1.5 trillion dollars had been spent but thats what the estimates are for its cost going into 2070 and with how the military does their projections that will no doubt double or triple by 2070, thats also inflation adjusted cost at 1.5 trillion.

a reply to: TheScale

You do realize that the B-52 can't be used as an actual bomber anymore, against any kind of defenses right? They can't enter contested airspace at all, and only sling missiles from outside the range of defenses until they are knocked down enough for them to be able to safely get around them.

But, what I was saying, is that you brought up the, supposed, $1.5T cost of the F-35 life cycle. If you think the B-52 has cost near that, in 60 years, you're dreaming. And it's going to cost a lot more than that, with upcoming upgrades including putting new engines on. But for some reason, it's a sign of a ridiculous program that the F-35 is going to cost anywhere near $1T after 60 years.

The F-16 suffered 80 Class A mishaps related to engines in 14 years, from 1990-2004. Of those 80, fewer than 10 resulted in loss of the aircraft. As for the F135, it's having the same problems every engine has had when it was going through development. The F135 had flown 50,000 hours as of April of this year, and had a fleet readiness rate of 95% across all three models.

And, yet again, I didn't say that you said it had been spent, but that it was the cost of the total life cycle. And it's already down to well under $1T, and dropping.

a reply to: Zaphod58

i will admit though, i have a strong love for this engine. its a beast of an engine. so in regards to the cost, your saying that u trust the estimates? cause personally i have a hard time believing any estimate the military puts out when they always get readjusted and costs rice dramatically. time will tell on that. the points u make about the b-52 are also why we have other types of aircraft like the f-22 and now f-35. i agree the b-52 is probly past its useful prime but we werent talking about the b-52. i believe some of what u associate with the hmd could be confused with other integrated systems. its essentially just a heads up display the pilot doesnt need to take his eyes off of cause of headtracking, the unique features though are things like the radar looking where the pilots looking so they can engage an enemy. even without an hmd that system could still be in place with a standard hud on the dash, especially since most of those locks come from a tone. in the end all a hud/hmd, whatever does is display information to the pilot visually. the bonus with having it in the visor is the pilot can look anywhere and still obtain that info.

a reply to: TheScale

The HMD is able to target, and track objects where the pilot looks, which the HUD can't do. That means that they can target off boresight, and no longer have to point the aircraft to where the target is.

The B-52 and KC-135 have both spent close to $1T in development, production, upkeep and upgrade costs, for far fewer aircraft. There's no reason to think that costs will go up for this one either.

a reply to: Zaphod58

no your confusing 2 different systems. all u need for the radar to track and lock a target for the pilot to engage is head tracking and eye tracking. those are seperate from what is visually being given to the pilot. yes the pilot can still be privy to extra info such was distance altitude etc with an hmd but its not exactly necessary.

a reply to: TheScale

I'm not confusing anything. I'm not talking about radar tracking a target. I'm talking about the ability to fire a HOBS missile, which can only be done using a HMDS/HMCS, which the F-35 uses. You can't target off boresight using a standard HUD. It's why the F-22 can only use the AIM-9X in a limited engagement window. They don't have an HMCS that can allow it to fire off boresight. Until they do, they can only fire in a window that's basically straight ahead, which they can see through the HUD.

a reply to: Zaphod58

due to the lack of headtracking and eye tracking being integrated with the radar system. the reason its able to attack those targets is cause the radar is also looking in the same direction the pilots looking cause they are tied together. u could take the hud away completely from the hmd and still the pilot would get tonal lock and be able to fire a missile.in fact i hope it works that way incase there is an error in the system and a pilot loses the hud for whatever reason. also going back to the system that allows the pilot to essentially look through the plane, i believe there are interesting things for that beyond just seeing close by targets. they could create a little recon package that is slung underwing and give the pilot the ability to actually see whats going on down at ground level. albiet its not the most efficient plane for the job but it does open up interesting options.

a reply to: TheScale

Since when does an IR missile use radar? Radar has absolutely nothing to do with the AIM-9X, and never has had anything to do with the AIM-9 family.

The infrared (IR) homing guidance section performs the tracking and guidance functions. The AIM-9X is a system-guided missile employing a mid-wave IR FPA seeker. The seeker, equipped with High Off-Boresight (HOBS), can be used with a helmet-mounted sight for wider attack envelope. It uses passive infrared (IR) energy for target acquisition and tracking. After the launch, the seeker follows the heat signature from the engines of the hostile aircraft.

www.airforce-technology.com...

If you don't have a helmet mounted targeting system, you're limited to the seeker FOV, which means you pretty much have to have your HUD and nose pointed at the target to get it to lock on. Absolutely nothing to do with radar, and everything to do with where the pilot is looking.

a reply to: Zaphod58

because like that article states the missile itself has the package onboard to look in other directions, all its getting is the telemetry from where the pilot is looking and focus's on that section of space. the f-35 does have the ability for its radar to also look where the pilot is looking aswell though, sorry i confused that with the ir portion of the specialized aim-9 itself. its still a seperate system from the hud though.

a reply to: TheScale

The AIM-9X has a high off boresight capability, but it has to know where to look. The HMDS/HMCS locks the seeker onto the target in the area the missile can't see. Without that initial lock, the missile doesn't know where to go to find the target. That's why the F-22 couldn't use the HOBS capability.

When employed with a Helmet Mounted Sight or display, the AIM-9X Block I can hit targets as much as 90 degrees of bore-sight and can lock onto targets at much farther ranges under more challenging conditions that its predecessor. Even without a HMS, the AIM-9X is a huge leap in capability and has a much wider angle bore-sight view than the AIM-9M it replaces. It is also much more maintenance friendly.

foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com...

No helmet system, no HOBS. With the helmet system, the missile can see targets off boresight.

a reply to: Zaphod58

again though your confusing the heads up display being projected into the visor with the telemetry being given to the missile. the 2 are seperate. one is giving u visual information, altitude,speed etc, thats the hud, the other is tracking where your looking and giving that info to the missile so it knows where to look. u can remove the visual hud altogether and the missile will still be getting the telemetry from where the pilot is looking and know to look in that direction.

Statements about the F-35 having poor range are always amusing.

It's a 29,000 lb (empty) aircraft that carries 18,500 lb of fuel and all stores internally. That's almost as much fuel as a F-22 and almost as much fuel as an F-14D with two external fuel tanks. The amount of fuel the F-35A carries is a greater proportion of the aircraft's weight than almost any other fighter. F-135 bypass ratio is 0.57 compared to 0.30 for the F-119 and 0.76 for the F-110, so TSFC is probably going to be decent.

The range of the F-35A on internal fuel in A2G configuration is >590 nautical miles. This is the USAF requirement, actual range is going to be somewhat better. Recent slides to Israel show that in A2A internal fuel configuration range is closer to 750 nautical miles. There are provisions for external fuel tanks, but AFAIK these will not be integrated on the aircraft initially. There is also a timeline for advanced engines, which should increase F-35 range by 25% (740nm A2G, 940 nm A2A).

Since the F-35A is more survivable due to stealth, advanced sensors, and highly integrated avionics it can also take a more direct, less conservative route at medium altitude to strike at the enemy. So it wouldn't be surprising if in the highest threat environments the F-35 has several multiples of the range of older aircraft.




a reply to: TheScale

Without the HMDS the pilot won't know where to look.

a reply to: TheScale

Again, no I'm not. The HMDS shows the pilot where to look for the target. The pilot looks at the target, the missile locks on. Without the pilot looking at the target, the missile doesn't see the target. Without the symbology on the display, the pilot has no idea where that Su-35 is, at 40 miles. He wouldn't know it was there until it was within visual range. Without knowing where to look, to let the missile see the target, the missile isn't going to lock on.