US Navy's X-47B to Attempt Aerial Refueling Tomorrow

“Tomorrow, actually, the weather looks good,” said Capt. Beau Duarte, the Navy’s head of carrier-launched drone programs — at least, he added cautiously, as of “right now.”

If the weather holds, the Navy’s experimental X-47B drone will refuel in mid-air — the first time an unmanned aircraft has ever done so. On previous tests, the X-47B has maneuvered to within 30 feet of a flying tanker, holding position just behind the trailing fuel hose called a drogue. Tomorrow, using a new optical sensor rather than the high-precision GPS that has guided it on previous flights and carrier landings, the X-47B will close the gap and insert its refueling probe into the drogue.

Mid-air refueling is a nerve-wracking task for human pilots, but it’s essential to America’s global air superiority. Flying tankers let short-ranged fighters like the Navy’s F-18 launch from carriers at sea to strike targets as far inland as Afghanistan. For an unmanned aircraft, “tanking” holds even more potential. Even with all the fuel in the world, a manned aircraft is ultimately limited by the endurance of its human crew. An unmanned plane can just keep going, tanking over and over without tiring, until it runs out of ammunition or critical equipment breaks.

The superhuman endurance of drones — their robotic relentlessness — is why the Navy already envisions the X-47B’s successors, the as-yet-unbuilt UCLASS drones, as conducting 24-7 patrols around the aircraft carrier. UCLASS stands for “Unmanned Carrier-Launched Surveillance and Strike.” But there’s a bitter debate over whether UCLASS should emphasize the first S, surveillance, or the second, Strike, because an aircraft optimized for long, patient patrols, dropping an occasional bomb, is a very different design from one optimized for deep raids into defended airspace.

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And after the aerial refueling test, the X-47Bs will be retired:

There are no plans to extend the testing for its Unmanned Carrier Air Vehicle demonstrator (UCAS-D) program after this month’s planned autonomous aerial refueling (AAR) tests, Naval Air Systems Command officials said on Tuesday.

Following the end of the testing contract the service plans to donate the two Northrop Grumman X-47B unmanned aerial vehicles — Salty Dog 501 and Salty 502 — to a museum or resign them to the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) at Davis Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz. — the Pentagon’s so-called aircraft “boneyard,” said Capt. B.V. Duarte, program manager of NAVAIR’s PMA-268 that oversees UCAS-D and the Navy’s planned Unmanned Carrier Launched Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) programs.

Despite call in Congress to extend testing on the Northrop platforms, Duarte said not only had the Navy completed the testing plan for the X-47s but also the costs to reconfigure the Salty Dogs to behave more like the Navy’s preferred option for UCLASS would be prohibitive.

“From a X-47 perspective, I don’t see the tie, necessarily,” he told USNI News following the briefing.
“Given the differences between the X-47 and the UCLASS and the amount of money it would take to make it a more useful risk reduction platform” it would be cost prohibitive.

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