Re:Midair plane refuels done by a drone for the first time
by adolph on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @02:46PM
(#27451557)
Prior to that, in 2012, DARPA’s Autonomous High-Altitude Refueling program demonstrated fully autonomous aerial refueling of unmanned air vehicles at high altitude. This culminated with two modified RQ-4 Global Hawkdrones flying in close formation to test probe-and-drogue contacts, as seen in this video:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40955/the-navys-tanker...
Re:Midair plane refuels done by a drone for the first time
by engineer_22 on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @03:04PM
(#27451772)
This refers, I think, to a drone being refueled by a manned aircraft. The roles have now reversed.
This is the first time an unmanned drone has refueled a manned aircraft.
Specifically, a prototype of the Navy's future unmanned carrier based tanker drone transferred a small amount of fuel to a 2 seat F-18 super hornet. They used a 'probe and drogue' or 'basket' style refueling where the receiving jet initiates contact.
The Navy demonstrated the reverse capability...unmanned drone receiving fuel from a manned tanker aircraft...in 2015.
more details and history: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40955/the-navys-tanker...