Posted on 06/10/2021 10:14:51 AM PDT by White Lives Matter
An unmanned tanker drone successfully refueled a fighter jet in mid-air during a test flight on Friday.
The impressive feat, which involved a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet, demonstrated the significant potential of unmanned tanker drones and could mark the beginning of the end for traditional piloted tanker aircraft.
During the test flight, the drone - a Boeing-built device named MQ-25 Stingray - maintained its altitude and speed as the hose extended and the two aircraft briefly linked up to exchange fuel.
The test was carried out from the MidAmerica St. Louis Airport in Mascoutah, Illinois.
In total, 325lbs of fuel was transferred during the flight which lasted 4.5 hours.
(Excerpt) Read more at unexplained-mysteries.com ...
What does this means is that drones can refuel drones, that there is less need for a live pilot to be out at risk.
325lbs is about 40 gallons. They’re going to have to step it up a bit.
Pretty cool!
Remotely controlled , can be pirated..Has to fly blindly ...how to avoid a collision in air.
One step closer to Skynet.
Very cool imagery from that. There’s a lot of benefits from not having to support keeping crew members alive on aircraft. That’s a ton of weight that gets dumped. While I do think human pilots still have an edge for a lot of air superiority missions (at least for now), drones are excellent candidates for things like refueling aircraft, recon flights, persistence missions, and support roles (e.g. AWACS). There’s a lot of benefit to being able to field multiple AWACS closer to combat all working in tandem. With multiple input signals, it becomes a lot easier to defeat stealth. This will become critical during power projection against advanced adversaries in the future.
True, but this was probably a first step demonstration. Looks like that tanker could deliver several thousand pounds in total.
Dragging the drogue is simple. Successfully plugging into the drogue is a little more tricky, but I could see that as another next step in the future.
It’s just a proof of concept. 40 gallons or 400 makes no difference. The challenging bits are can you find each other, fly together, get the drogue to connect, successfully begin fueling, maintain the connection, and safely break connection. If you can do that, then it doesn’t really matter how much fuel is transferred.
This was a good, successful test. It’s an excellent tool to have available and particularly valuable in forward positions where refueling aircraft may be put at risk. Those things are flying bombs. I sure wouldn’t want to be in one as any accident means game-over in a hurry. Perfect for a drone.
Looks like it!
The implications of this are amazing. We could have a constant stream of fuel delivery drones in designated areas basically on standby 24x7.
In theory, this could extend beyond the military into commercial aircraft (specifically I’m thinking freight, but there could be cost savings on passenger craft if they didn’t need to take off with a full-trip’s fuel load because they could have their fuel delivered in flight).
Could also allow aircraft to be aloft indefinitely. You could have a large, long-distance specialty craft that circled the globe or a designated region, then send drones to load and offload cargo and to refuel. Could even launch the drones with some sort of terrestrial system rather than having to use their own fuel for takeoff.
Considering that on December 17, 1903 man made the 1st big leap into the air...
This is just the first version of an unmanned airborne tanker. There will be upgrades. I think the plan is to have four of these per carrier. They could build additional "tanker carriers" custom designed to fly only tanker aircraft like these to service the aircraft flying off the main fleet carrier. They could go a lot of ways with these.
But can they recharge our new electric fighter planes?
(Ducking…)
” Successfully plugging into the drogue is a little more tricky, but I could see that as another next step in the future.”
Nope. We did that automatously with F-18s like 15 years ago. Not that hard.
I am out of date then. How did you close the loop? Camera guidance? and was it on a Navy drogue or AF boom?
The Drone does not have an Internal Tank used to refuel the Fighter, it uses External under wing Tanks.
I assume this means the Drone can also carry Bombs and Rockets making it a multi use platform.
A new version of MOAB ? Let’s just Pray the muzziescum don’t do it.
Bad to the Bone.
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