#Because Lockheed
That and a Clint Eastwood movie.
This December the Sidewinder celebrates its first kill, 50 years ago.
Just sayin’...
Nothing came of the Honeywell helmet sight because Honeywell early retired all the engineers on the project back in the late 90’s
I saw the prototype
I was working on this 20 years ago. Its very frustrating the the U.S. hasn’t universally fielded helmet mounted sights.
I can see an issue with the bay mounted missiles in the F-22 and F-35 as the fully gimballed seeker can’t look through the airframe to sync with the off axis sight, but that is another matter.
And whatever happened to fighter designations 24-31 and 33-34? Yes, I know some X-planes used those numbers, but most are out of sequence in their timing and the X-22 has nothing to do with the Raptor, although a few X designations do correspond to developmental aircraft. Designations haven’t made any sense for 30 years.
This article tells me that maybe we should just privatize defense. lol