Global Hawk Aerial Refueling - Which Way?

Aviation Week and Space Technology ^ | 7/4/2010 | Global Hawk Aerial Refueling - Which Way?

[USNBandit]

I had a statics professor at Annapolis that who had three pricipals of statics. The sum of the forces equals zero, the sum of the moments equals zero, and you can't push on a rope.

Pushing fuel up a hose seems a lot like pushing on a rope.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

If there is one military science organization to make it work its DARPA.

[USNBandit]

Oh no, I used the wrong form of principles.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

It all right.

[jz638]

If it were truly simpler to equip aircraft with the “drogue” and tankers with the “probe”, don’t you think someone would have done it by now with manned aircraft? This reeks of a sneaky CYA or budgetary effort instead of a sound engineering decision.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

I think that they are serious if an organization like DARPA is getting involved. They have the money,time, and contractors to make this thing work. They made the X-37 and X-51 the success it is.These aircraft are all came from the mittelworks of DARPA.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

If more taxpayer dollars went into defense organization like DARPA,ONR in partnership with defense contractors we would be light years ahead of anyone.

[jz638]

If this were a traditional-direction probe and drogue refueling, would it really take more than a year to set up a flight test and two years to field? I’m calling BS on this. If this is what DARPA is spending its money on, it needs a nickel’s worth of common sense, not more taxpayer dollars.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

A lot of people thought that the X-37 and X-51 would not work and it did. The organization who did the scientific reaserch and made it work was DARPA.They make miracles.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

DARPA’s mission is to maintain technological superiority of the U.S. military and prevent technological surprise from harming our national security.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Here its success list:
Project AGILE
ARPANET, the predecessor of the Internet
Aspen Movie Map
Boeing X-45
CPOF - the command post of the future - networked information system for Command control.
DAML
DARPA Grand Challenge - driverless car competition
DARPA Network Challenge
DEFENDER
High Performance Knowledge Bases
HISSS
Hypersonic Research Program
I3 (Intelligent Integration of Information), supported the Digital Library research effort through NSF
Internet
Project MAC
MQ-1 Predator
Multics
NLS/Augment, the origin of the canonical contemporary computer user interface
Onion routing
Passive radar
Policy Analysis Market
POSSE
Rapid Knowledge Formation
Sea Shadow
Strategic Computing Program
Synthetic Aperture Ladar for Tactical Applications (SALTI)
SURAN (1983–87)
Project Vela (1963)

[saganite]

It is possible to “reverse refuel” on KC-135’s, although the quantities delivered are small and it takes a little longer. This is hardly a new concept.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

Thank You.

[saganite]

No problem. As you can see by the replies you received on this thread there is a tremendous amount of frustration with anything associated with government. Frankly, I feel the same way but I also realize some things do get done by some agencies and DARPA is one of those.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

DARPA and ONR have the greatest success of technology that currently impossible to possible.DARPA looks beyond today’s known needs and requirements.Three huge success by DARPA was the development of missile defense and Global Positioning and the Internet.DARPA created the foundation technologies in automatic target recognition, space based sensing, propulsion, and materials that were transferred to the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO), later known as the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO), now titled the Missile Defense Agency (MDA).

[mazda77]

One would think with all of the advanced video monitoring capabilities in the drones that a simple camera could have been added to let the pilot see just as much as other pilots do during the proceedure. Additionally, the boom operator also guides the pilot to the probe. Maybe even training the boom operators to share control for the proceedure.

[RightOnline]

It is? News to me.

[ops33]

Isn’t that pretty much what firefighters do?

[jz638]

I’m not questioning the value of DARPA, only this project. DARPA’s projects should dare to go into the area of high-risk, high-reward, which also means that with the successes, there are going to be failures.

UAV-to-UAV AAR makes sense and I’m eager to hear of its success, in fact it seems like a completely straightforward process at this point in history. Trying to accomplish the task by p!$$ing up a rope just doesn’t make sense to me.