In October last year, F-35 Program executive director Lieutenant General Christopher Bogdan advised the US House Armed Services Committee that the $500,000 F-35 Helmet Mounted Display System would have to be redesigned when testing showed it could break the neck of lightweight pilots during ejection.
Now the joint program office (JPO) expects delivery of the lighter Gen III helmet from Rockwell Collins by November this year. Flightglobal reported that fixes include a switch on the Martin Baker US16E (MK16) ejection seat that delays the parachute's opening by milliseconds when occupied by a lightweight pilot, plus a head support panel sewn between the parachute risers.
“We’ll have our first Gen III light helmets now aligned with the seat in November of 2016, so we can remove the restriction for the lightweight pilots weighing under [62 kilograms],” LTGEN Bogdan said at a forum in Washington DC earlier this month.
“We’ve tested helmets with similar mass properties, and we think it’s going to work.”