US military’s next gen fighter jet helmet lets pilots control everything with thought

In past experiments small mini brains known as organoids, which are now being trained on Dopamine to improve them, have out performed some pretty impressive Artificial Intelligences (AI) which means that when it comes to beating AI powered combat drones and advanced wingmen being able to tap into the human brain might provide an advantage.

Military pilots fighting an enemy need to engage in complex manoeuvres that take precious seconds or minutes of their time and attention. Advanced touch screens or voice commands allow them to perform those actions faster, but it still can take precious seconds. That time could mean the difference between life and death.

US military researchers have a solution in mind, literally - a high-tech helmet that connects directly to the pilot’s brain without requiring surgical implants, enabling two-way brain-to-computer communication. This helmet would interpret brain waves and carry out multiple functions in nanoseconds. Theoretically, it would let pilots carry out sophisticated tasks, such as directing drones into combat remotely, through the power of thought alone. Or pilots could transmit what they see to a military base and receive information back through the helmet to their brains.

The type of non-invasive neurotechnology being developed might also enhance a brain’s ability to recall key information, learn new skills faster, and even perform difficult tasks with assistance from a remote specialist.

In 2018 DARPA began a $125 million program called Next-Generation Non-surgical Neurotechnology (N3), which was aimed at accomplishing precisely that. In theory, the N3 helmet would create a pathway to integrate cybernetics into the military without having to insert devices into human bodies.

“By creating a more accessible Brain Machine Interface (BMI) that doesn’t require surgery to use, DARPA could deliver tools that allow mission commanders to remain meaningfully involved in dynamic operations that unfold at rapid speed,” Al Emondi, the N3 program manager, said in a DARPA press release.

Via 16 independent channels interacting with different parts of the brain, this helmet is intended both to sense output from the wearer’s brain and to transmit data to that brain using some combination of magnetic, optical and acoustic neural transmitters. Program documents also state a requirement to interact with 16 cubic millimeters of neural tissue within 50 milliseconds.

While the final product is still possibly years away, DARPA has been working on neural projects like this one for decades, pouring more than $1 billion into neuroscience since 1973. Following a renewed influx of funding post-1999, DARPA research has resulted in multiple breakthroughs, starting with experiments in the 2000s in which monkeys proved capable of moving a cursor on a computer screen - and then an artificial arm - through thought alone. In the next significant experiment, humans performed more complex, thought-directed tasks such as piloting ground and air vehicles, including a simulated F-35 stealth fighter.

Despite these advances, DARPA’s work hasn’t produced systems intended for operational use - yet. There are several major obstacles. One is that most prior research depended on implants to establish a direct link to the brain. For now, the military seems intent on focusing on communication systems that don’t require implants, the sort Elon Musk is testing with Neuralink.

Over the past decade DARPA funded researchers have made several inroads toward the brain-helmet interface goal. A Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory team aims to develop a “completely non-invasive, coherent optical system for recording from the brain,” according to DARPA page announcing the research. The system would measure optical changes in neural tissue that correlate with neural activity. Meanwhile, a Palo Alto Research Center team in California plans to pair ultrasounds and magnetic fields to create localized electrical currents that could transmit data to the brain, according to the DARPA press release. A third team, at Teledyne in Thousand Oaks, California, is using magnetometers to detect brain activity via magnetic fields, and ultrasound to transmit those signals to neurons. A fourth team at Carnegie Mellon also plans to use ultrasound, paired with pulses of skull-penetrating light to read brain activity, as well as manipulation of magnetic fields to write to brains.

Other methods for N3 aren’t truly non-invasive, but rather minutely invasive. For example, a team at the neurotechnology company Battelle based in Columbus, Ohio, is researching the non-surgical insertion of nanotransducers, tiny devices to convert the brain’s electrical signals into a format that an external transceiver can read. The devices aim to work in reverse too, for full transmit-and-receive connectivity.

Meanwhile, a group at the University of Technology Sydney, in Australia, announced in 2023 that they had developed a non-invasive device using a graphene sensor to monitor brain visualization, enabling mind-control of a robot dog based on a menu of nine possible commands.

What if we make the leap to sending and receiving data between brains: a Brain-to-Computer-to-Brain link though? That too may be possible, with N3’s MOANA program. Short for “Magnetic, Optical and Acoustic Neural Access,” MOANA aims to enable direct Brain-to-Brain communication. Researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas injected gene-therapy payloads to essentially reprogram neurons to be more receptive to “write” capability using magnetic field manipulation. At the same time, the researchers used skull-penetrating light to fulfil the read functions.

Such capability could one day be harnessed to allow a remote specialist to assist a non-expert in performing specific actions - like providing emergency medical care or repairing a complex device. That sounds farfetched, but researchers at Wake Forest University, the University of California, and the University of Kentucky established a neural-link between rats in 2009. The experiment enabled an inexperienced rat to perform a task in minutes that an experienced rat required weeks to learn.

At least one major new military platform on the horizon is planned to integrate ‘read’ capability: the Tempest sixth-generation jet fighter that the UK, Japan, and Italy are developing should include a flight helmet that monitors the pilot’s brain activity and other biometric data including skin response, heart rate, respiration, eye tracking, and EKG. Onboard AI could one day use this monitoring capability to decide whether to step in should the pilot need emergency assistance.

So far, none of these projects have led to technology that is ready for the military to use. DARPA has not yet released the results of these avenues of research, but it’s clear there’s still a great deal of work ahead.