“Heads-Up Holy Grail
Still to be developed is a helicopter helmet able to integrate aircraft sensor imagery with symbology in a wide field-of-view, high- resolution, binocular, full-color, totally crashworthy HMD. Tom Harding at USAARL acknowledged, “That’s still the Holy Grail, that plus high brightness for really good contrast in daylight conditions. Some systems that we’re developing now have some high-brightness features. The older systems are fairly dim by comparison.”
The Army Product Manager Apache Sensors in Huntsville is working with the Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center at Rock Island, Illinois, to modernize the Apache Integrated Helmet And Display Sighting System (IHADSS). The monocular IHADSS has a field of view 40 degrees horizontal by 30 degree vertical. It shows the AH-64 pilot and co-pilot/gunner pilotage and targeting imagery with symbology, and it aims the Apache gun.
Ongoing engineering development aims to replace the obsolete cathode ray tube (CRT) in an ESA helmet display unit (HDU) with a brighter organic light-emitting diode (OLED) flat panel display made by eMagin. OLED technology provides higher brightness, contrast and resolution than CRT displays with less power required. The thick power cable run to the Apache helmet gets notably thinner and lighter with OLEDs. The monochrome OLED HDU completed critical design and test readiness reviews successfully and should finish development in 2019. Program Manager Apache Sensors is meanwhile exploring a follow-on color OLED replacement.”
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