DARPA RQ-4A Air-to-Air Refueling Program Analysis

By -

Air-to-air refueling (AAR) has been commonplace in manned aviation for more than six decades.  Today, remotely piloted vehicles fly hundreds, and sometimes thousands of miles from their launch bases to for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions.  The inability to refuel in-flight limits time on station and increases the number of aircraft required to surveil a given target location.  DARPA's KQ-X program, initiated in 2010, was designed to prove the technologies required to refuel UAVs in-flight.

DARPA has released videos of the close-proximity test flight of two modified RQ-4A Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles.  The final test flight last May demonstrated the ability of close formation flight for most of a 2.5-hour engagement at 44,800 feet.  Although the UAVs did not actually pass fuel, post-flight analysis indicated that 60% of  attempts would achieve contact between the
"Navy style" refueling probe and drogue. 

Perspective from receiving aircraft.
Perspective from drogue-equipped aircraft.
This article in Air Force magazine provides an interesting background on the history and technical aspects of the program.  The Navy's Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) Aircraft Carrier Demonstration (UCAS-D) program has utilized a surrogate Boeing F/A-18D equipped with X-47B avionics to test AAR technologies.  NAVAIR plans to perform an actual air-to-air refueling with an X-47B in 2014.  The follow-on UCLASS program will likely be the first system to use this technology operationally.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2013 Naval Drones Survey

By -
What are the latest trends in unmanned systems?  What technologies show the most promise to enhance future naval operations?  Readers of this site represent naval and industry professionals, academics, and other interested parties from more than 160 countries. We're offering an anonymous survey to understand this wealth of knowledge contained in our readers' insights and experience.  The results will be discussed in future posts in this space.  Please take a few minutes to respond to the 8 easy questions. Link for mobile sites: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RT5YKFB *Note - you will not be emailed, phoned, nor otherwise accosted for responding.
Read more...

Inspector Gadgets: Drones in the Hangar

By -
Image
Checking an aircraft for damage can be arduous and meticulous work,  but last week’s issue of  The Economist   highlights  an experimental commercial approach. In simple terms, the Remote Intelligent Survey Equipment for Radiation ( RISER ) drone is a quadcopter with LIDAR and forms the basis for a system to use lasers to automatically detect damage to airliners. The obvious naval application for inspector drones would be for ground-, carrier, and surface vessel-based fixed-wing and helicopter units, although the configurations for each aircraft type and location might make some more practical than others. For example it probably makes more sense to consolidate expertise in inspector drones at regional maintenance and readiness centers than to try to outfit a unit in the small helicopter hangar of every destroyer. But there’s always something to be said for an operational capability. While  The Economist  notes that the drones are allowed at Luton airport, UK, to “operate only
Read more...

CATCH OF THE DAY: REFLECTIONS ON THE CHINESE SEIZURE OF A U.S. OCEAN GLIDER

By -
By Heiko Borchert On 15 December 2016, China seized an  Ocean Glider , an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV), used by the U.S. Navy to conduct oceanographic tasks in international waters about 50-100 nautical miles  northwest of the Subic Bay port  on the Philippines. Available information suggests that the glider had been deployed from USNS  Bowditch  and was captured by Chinese sailors that came alongside the glider and grabbed it “despite the radioed protest from the  Bowditch  that it was U.S. property in international waters,” as the  Guardian  reported. The U.S. has “ called upon China  to return the UUV immediately.” On 17 December 2016 a  spokesman of the Chinese Defense Ministry  said China would return the UUV to the “United States in an appropriate manner.” Initial legal assessments by U.S. scholars like  James Kraska and Paul Pedrozo  suggest the capture is violating the law of the sea, as the unmanned glider can be defined as a vessel in international maritime law tha
Read more...