The helmet sight has always been low on the list by the Air Force (the first, the biggest and for a long time the only customer of the Rafale), it is not a choice of the Dassault team. Having worked very briefly on the Sagem / Safran project, the Gerfaut, in the early 2000s the situation was already complicated. A Thales / Sagem war, AA exercise retexes in South America where the Mirages had been ignited because opposite - equipped with Israeli helmets - they could lock a missile fire on a plane without it being necessarily in the hud.
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But the arrival of this helmet is still good news: it means that everything ahead of the list has been done. When we manage to implement this, the device now has a good level of maturity.
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The real question remains, what will this helmet visor be capable of doing? A hud that's for sure, deported targeting most certainly. But then will he be able to control the laser pod? or even the reco pod? Does the F4 standard sensors include the helmet viewfinder? In short, a lot of unanswered questions