New Night Vision Helmets For F-35 Pilots Are Insane-Looking

What happens when the extremely expensive helmet you cooked up for the extremely expensive F-35 doesn’t, uh, work? You strap together a new one in a hurry. This wicked looking replacement was gutted and filled with crazy killer optics.

The original helmet was supposed to do some pretty insane things, DefenseTech reports, like give pilots a view from the bottom of their own plane just by glancing down. But all this projected optics trickery proved too tricky, and the original helmet plan just ain’t working. So here’s the alternative: a foreign helmet designed for Eurofighter Typhoons, with new American optics crammed inside: night vision goggles, a flip-down HUD and head-tracking. Will it work? Will it be affordable? We’ll see. From a purely sci-fi lust standpoint, however, I do kinda miss the Stormtrooper chic look of the original. [DefenseTech]