The RADAR looks like it belongs in Top Gun. This is a Bell & Ross watch that’s so unconventional, one marvels that it could even be engineered. Yet here it is, a targeting reticule for your very own wrist.

The design and engineering difficulties required to create this piece must have been astonishing. After all, the watch’s appearance goes against nearly every bit of inherited wisdom regarding watches. For example, the face is not circular but square. Yet within this square are three concentric circles, each identifying a particular unit of time: hours, minutes, and seconds.

Thus, there are no watch hands, no individual dials, and no numbers even. Instead, there are just those three differently coloured line segments which communicate the time to the wearer. The discs used were far heavier than normal watch hands, creating a host of additional problems, so the engineering team had to develop a material that was much lighter–kind of like the composite materials used in some of today’s most advanced defence aircraft. With the Bell & Ross RADAR, the military aircraft feel is completed by a watch strap made out of black rubber, exactly the same shade as the rest of the watch itself.

Every watch company seems to strive to announce that it’s the first ever to do such and such. For this piece, it appears that Bell & Ross truly have created the first watch ever modelled after an airplane’s cockpit. Although it may not be the easiest timekeeping device to interpret, you’ll probably be the only one you know who owns one. It’ll turn heads, that’s for sure.

We always enjoy these innovative pieces, those watches that take the everyday watch and attempt to turn those old concepts on their head. It’s truly amazing what can be accomplished when the design team is freed from assumptions and set loose.