After modernizing aircraft (planes and helicopters) since the 1970s by equipping them with navigation/attack systems, then with optronic systems and finally with guided missiles, in the 2000s, Sagem began modernizing…the aircraft pilots by equipping them with helmet-mounted sights (beginning with the Rafale plane) equipped with all the enhancements which the most advanced digital optronics could afford.
In the 1970s, most fighter aircraft in service were equipped with navigation/attack systems based on non-inertial gyroscopic units and Doppler radar. Since then, Sagem has replaced these underperforming systems with inertial units, often hybridized with GPS information (receiver located in the inertial unit). Pilots only noticed the difference because:
The detail and accuracy of the piloting/firing control information appearing in the cockpit (head-up display) was unheard of.
Mission preparation became more and more "computerized" with digital workstations on the ground supplying digital cassettes to initialize the on-board system, which had become an integrated digital unit in itself.
Following this modernization in inertial navigation/attack, more and more thermal sensors began to be seen alongside on-board ground attack radar, to increase air-to-ground and air-to-air warfare capacities. Sagem, which is the leading European specialist in the field, has modernized many aircraft since then (planes and helicopters) by equipping them with the following, as appropriate:
Multifunctional systems with FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) thermal cameras
Multifunctional optronic systems with gyrostabilized payloads
Early warning missile defense systems
All these developments, integrated in a digital system that includes inertial navigation/attack and which supplies the precision direction coordinates for it, became very visible to the pilot, who accesses the appropriately processed infrared or visible imaging. Sagem offers display and navigation equipment based on electronic maps as well as weapons management devices.
Weapons, which were usually ballistic (neither guided nor propelled) ten to twenty years ago, have been modernized since. Sagem found itself at the heart of this modernization with its two key technologies (example of the AASM air-to-ground modular weapon), as was the case for the actual aircraft:
The guidance "substrate" of the missile in terminal phase, provided by a mini-inertial unit with GPS hybridization.
The guidance precision unit provided, in the most demanding cases, by an IR view of the terrain in front of the weapon by thermal camera.
All this is integrated in a system which controls the flight and adjusts the propulsion, according to digital data supplied by the ground-based mission planning system. Sagem supplies the full weapon system, with all the navigation/attack logistics
Once the pilot's entire operational environment had been modernized (navigation/attack system, optronic systems, weapon guidance and the weapons themselves), all that remained for Sagem was to "modernize the actual pilot", by equipping him with an advanced technology helmet-mounted sight. This is the case with the Gerfaut display, selected for the Rafale aircraft. It is based on "100% optronic" solutions, both for the optics enabling the pilot to aim at a point in space ("enemy at 10 o'clock", but far more accurate) and the helmet orientation which captures the direction of the target point.
This is enabled through a set of diodes on the helmet and micro cameras which detect their position in the cockpit. Added to this are all the calculations which, with the help of gyroscopy, enable the direction of the line of sight to be converted into any useful system of coordinates.
For further information on aircraft modernization by Sagem, see:
- Optronics for fighter planes (including Gerfaut display)
- Modernization of aircraft and helicopters (Aerospace)
Modernization through equipment and technology, which is not unrelated:
- Modernization of helicopters (airland defense)
- Modernization of armored vehicles
- Modernization of the foot soldier (FELIN system)
