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