USAF F-16 Contract Opens Door For Helmet-Mounted Cueing Rival

Red 6 launched seven years ago with the idea that a new helmet-mounted display with augmented reality vision can help train military pilots. Now the company thinks the technology could offer a generational improvement in actual dogfighting in combat.

A new contract signed by the Orlando, Florida-based company with the U.S. Air Force’s Air Combat Command (ACC) and the Air Force Research Laboratory offers the first clue about the technology’s expanded potential. The deal requires Red 6 to integrate the Airborne Tactical Augmented Reality System (ATARS) into the Lockheed Martin F-16.

• Red 6 to integrate ATARS augmented reality system on the Lockheed Martin fighters
• Helmet production is expected to ramp up in 2027

In a stroke, the agreement advances the ATARS helmet beyond purely training roles and makes Red 6 a rival of the Vision Systems International Joint Helmet-Mounted Cueing System series, the standard combat helmet for more than 20 years for U.S. F-16s, Boeing F-15s and F/A-18s.

But can a helmet originally designed to bolster training step into operations, enabling combat pilots to aim their missiles by simply looking in the direction of the targets?

“It turns out that the byproduct of doing augmented reality really well is that you can do next-generation helmet-queuing, but you can do it to a far higher standard,” Red 6 CEO Daniel Robinson says.

ATARS is designed to project three-dimensional, augmented reality images onto a pilot’s visor, allowing them to see and interact with simulated objects, including aircraft.

The core of the technology is Red 6’s Enhanced Visual Environment headset, which is due to enter production for the Air Force’s Northrop T-38 Talon trainer fleet next year. Red 6 advertises the headset’s display as the brightest in the defense market, at 18,000 nits, or twice the brightness level of an outdoor display in a sports stadium. That extraordinary brightness means the Red 6 helmet displays objects that the pilot can see on the brightest day with the sky as the background.

In the short term, the Air Force plans to use the ATARS technology to improve training. Instead of waiting for other aircraft to become available, T-38 pilots can take off and interact with simulated partners, including collaborative combat aircraft, or adversaries in the sky.

The same technology could be used for operations. By integrating with mission systems, such as the radar, infrared search-and-track sensor or electronic support measures, the helmet can display real enemy aircraft on the pilot’s visor. The technology already syncs the display to the pilot’s eye movement, which offers a straightforward path to enabling helmet-mounted cueing.

“As we envision this, yes, it’s going to be a training system, but it’s also going to be an operational helmet as well,” Robinson says. “The ability not just to render in two dimensions, but to render in three dimensions and to take contextual information, offers us a whole new paradigm in how we think about not just helmet-mounted cueing, but situational awareness, looking at the battle space, understanding the electromagnetic spectrum, the ability to see the threat environments.

“The by-product of augmented reality is you can do helmet-queuing, but 10 times better than anything out there right now,” Robinson adds.

Red 6 plans to launch production of the ATARS helmet for the T-38 in the second quarter of 2026, even as testing continues over the next 12 months for F-16 integration. As ATARS production starts ramping up in 2027, the ACC’s F-16 units could become a customer.

“What’s great about going into the F-16 is . . . it unlocks the fighter community,”  Robinson says. “Because if it works in the F-16—and we believe it adds as much value as it’s going to, which we have no doubt—then the logical next steps are into the other fighter communities.”