A few months ago The Aviationist published a story about an interesting interview Maj. John Wilson, an F-35 pilot with 61th Fighter Squadron, gave to Krigeren, a Danish website focusing on military topics, at Luke Air Force Base.
Maj. Wilson clearly admitted that an A-10 Thunderbolt II will always be better in close air support than the F-35 because it was specifically designed to perform that kind of mission.
Recently, Kriegeren published the second part of the interview, focusing on the $400,000-a-unit Helmet-Mounted Display System (HMDS). The HMDS combines Forward Looking Infra Red (FLIR) and Distributed Aperture System (DAS) imaging, night vision, and a virtual Head Up Display (HUD).
The HMDS provides the pilot a sort-of X-ray vision imagery. He can see through any surface, and with the HUD symbology he sees what he needs to fly the plane and cue weapons using a display that follows his head and gets projected onto the visor through the line of sight imagery.
As already explained in a previous article, the HMDS has had issues, though, including jitter and latency (solved), along with problems dealing with turbulence and buffeting. All of these can cause display issues, which is particularly dangerous when the JSF is maneuvering to evade an enemy missile shot. It also suffers from decreased night-vision acuity, and questionable information sharing when 3 or 4 aircraft fly together.
Still, Wilson is probably not worried by these problems since he doesn’t use the helmet very much:
“It’s cool, but I don’t use it that often” he says.
The reason is pretty simple: “If I really wanna see what’s underneath me, I’ll just look outside, I just roll up ... because it doesn’t take much longer for me to just bank the airplane.”
According to the F-35 pilot, he can see with higher clarity with his own eyes than with the helmet display. Pilots consider it an “added benefit” and use it sometimes for night flying but that seems to be the only time the costly HMDS is used (at least by Wilson and his 61th FS colleagues).
Still, Wilson admits he’s an old school pilot, so there may be other pilots who use it more often.
“What about if you need to look behind you?” asks one of the interviewers.
Wilson says “I’ll use my eyes” because “I need to see things with my own eyes” to judge aspect, distance closure, and other details that you can’t get using a 2D camera.
The F-16, with no camera, has really good visibility: “It’s just a kind of apple to orange comparison,” Wilson explains, while highlighting the fact that the F-35 and the F-16 or F-22 were designed for different roles.
“If you are flying correctly and the jet is doing what it is supposed to do, [enemy] guys should die well before they get behind you” Wilson comments, suggesting, once again, that the JSF’s survivability in air-to-air combat (even against some of the aircraft it is supposed to replace) is based on its Beyond Visual Range (BVR), stealth and situational awareness, rather than in its agility.
Watch the full interview below:
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