FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

Oh, Great: Now Drones Can Refuel in Midair

All moral, ethical, and political quandaries aside, one of the big problems with aerial drones is that, eventually, the things must land. It’s the age-old problem of refueling – or for smaller unmanned systems, recharging. But that all could be...

All moral, ethical, and political quandaries aside, one of the big problems with aerial drones is that, eventually, the things must land. It’s the age-old problem of refueling – or for smaller unmanned systems, recharging. But that all could be changing. In recent trials headed up by the Department of Defense’s blue-sky research wing, DARPA, two unmanned aircraft were able to cruise close enough to one another to allow for automated refueling.

Advertisement

The experiments paired two RQ-4 Global Hawk planes, which at the moment are being used almost exclusively for spying. For a good 2.5 hours, and at cruising altitudes of 48,000 feet, the giving-Hawk’s 100-foot fuel probe managed to link up to the receiving-Hawk’s port. As the capstone on a two-year research project, the trial proved incredibly successful.

“The goal of this demonstration was to create the expectation that future Hale [High Altitude Long Endurance] aircraft will be refuelled in flight,” DARPA’s Jim McCormick told the BBC. “Such designs should be more affordable to own and operate across a range of mission profiles than systems built to satisfy the most stressing case without refuelling.”

It’s harbinger of a coming age of near endless flight and, by extension, near endless surveillance. Which, of course, maybe brings us one step closer to the War Room.

Top via DARPA

Reach this writer at brian@motherboard.tv. @thebanderson