F-35 fighter pilots to wear $400,000 helmets
Whoopee!!! Aren't government contracts sweet? Just hope we don't get another John McCain that crashes a few of these.
WASHINGTON — The F-35 Lightning II is one of the most complicated weapons systems ever developed, a sleek and stealthy fighter jet years in the making that is often called a flying computer because of its more than 8 million lines of code.
The Joint Strike Fighter comes in three versions, including one that is designed to take off and land on an aircraft carrier and another that lands vertically, as if it were a helicopter.
But to truly understand the most expensive weapons program in the history of the Pentagon, forget the plane for a minute. Consider the helmet.
It’s designed to protect the pilot’s head, of course. But compared to everything the helmet does, protection becomes something of an afterthought.
The helmet sees through the plane. Or rather it helps the pilot see through the plane. When the pilots look down, they don’t see the floor of the plane; they see the world below them. If the pilots look back, they see the sky behind them. Embedded in the skin of the aircraft are six cameras, and when the pilots move their heads to look in a particular direction, they are actually seeing through the corresponding camera, which sends an image to projectors inside the helmet that beam an image of the outside world on the helmet’s visor.
Which makes the visor not really a visor. It’s a screen that posts information the way some cars are now posting fuel and gas mileage on the windshield in what’s called a heads-up display. But beyond speed and altitude, F-35 pilots would see things such as the location of enemy aircraft or weapons on the ground.
http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20150405/NEWS02/150409508
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What more could any 1%er want?
a couple thousand. 
...Conventional Takeoff and District-CashDrop version. It can hit a committee member's campaign account within five hundred miles.
- They don't fly very well, nor for very long. But they're excellent at hitting campaign funding quotas......
I think I can, I think I can, I KNOW I can!!!
- Get another appropriations increase, of course.
What'd you think I meant?, fly? Hahahahahaha!!!
F-35 Costs $182 Million to $299 Million Per Plane
K&R
- Just like ours is now. I mean, when was the last time we actually fought a war. Against an army? WWII. Now, we only fight against people who can barely fight back. And usually with our own guns that they've captured from some puppet regime we've setup previously. And who fled at the first shot in anger.
The doors were open to barbarian invasions from the Huns and Germanic groups such as the Vandals, Lombards, Alamanni, Goths, Franks, and Burgundians to attack the Western Roman Empire. These groups brought the final blow, overrunning the Empire's towns and cities, meeting little resistance from the Roman army.
Eventually, barbarians dethroned the last Roman Emperor, when Germanic mercenaries led by Odovacar overthrew Romulus Augustus on September 4, 476. This event is commonly called the end of the Western Roman Empire. Despite the eventual failure of the Roman army to protect against such invasions, the army had been an effective military force in earlier times. More
