The military sector has found in drones the perfect companion for its combat aircraft, which will soon be able to refuel in the air safely while on mission, gaining time and effectiveness.
While we’ve been talking for years that drones are a super useful tool, we’ve barely gone from using them to record beautiful sunsets or for Amazon to drop us a package in the backyard.
But there the innovation of drones ended, unmanned vehicles that often appear in the news for having bundled it up in an airport (some fans of this hobby are little to respect safety regulations).
Fortunately, there is life beyond, and if in some field of research The money is not a problem that’s the military man.
In this sense, Boeing and Northrop Grumman have carried out for first time an airborne refueling of an F18 fighter via autonomous drone in a very specific conditions.
The MQ-25 T1 drone, codenamed Stingray, was developed and built by Boeing, after the aerospace company obtained a contract with the US Navy worth 805 million dollars.
Now, two years later, the MQ-25 has managed to autonomously refuel a piloted F / A-18 Super Hornet in flight.
To refuel, the fighter pilot began to fly in a tight formation under and behind the drone, at which point the MQ-25 released and extended its fuel supply hose, which is basically a funnel-shaped receptacle at the end of a long hose, and was attached to the front of the fighter for refueling.
Boeing plans call for tanker drones to operate off aircraft carriers, launching into the air to refuel the F / A-18 Super Hornets, EA-18G Growlers and F-35C Lightning II that pass through the area.
Currently this task was carried out by the piloted F / A-18s, so they had to be removed from their combat missions in order to do so, hence the importance of drones being able to deal with these maintenance issues.