My dad flew a KC-97. I wonder about the wisdom of not having someone manning the boom to keep an eye on things
It’s one of those things that I suspect can be handled robotically. You would still have one pilot involved that would be near an abort switch.
I agree, it is the whole concept of unmanned flight that I have tried to come to grips with. I honestly have never given much thought to unmanned refueling until I read this article. I don’t know why that would be such an advantage, but I’ll need to cogitate on it a bit.
I know I will probably feel somewhat stupid when someone gives me that good reason...
When I was in the USN, sending up a plane in bad weather to refuel another one when there was no place to land when a plane was approaching bingo fuel (with no land based divert available) I assumed was always a dicey proposition. I don’t think it happened often, but I know it happened.
I recall one time where the basket on a D-704 smashed into the canopy of a plane trying to refuel (canopy had to be replaced) and the basket became unusable, it began to do erratic figure eights. We had to load another buddy store onto another plane and launch it, and they did eventually refuel and get the plane down.
Interestingly, when we had to replace the canopy, they used it as a training exercise. In the hangar bay, they had a fully outfitted pilot strapped in, and they secured the inside of the cockpit in such a way there could be no canopy plastic that would fall somewhere and turn into FOD (Taped and sealed off everything) and the pilot used his survival knife to break through the canopy from the inside to simulate what it would be like if you ditched and couldn’t get the canopy open or blow it off.
It was very cool to watch. There were a lot of people watching (today it would probably be on YouTube) and I remember thinking as the pilot in full gear with his helmet on, visor down, and oxygen mask attached “There is no way he is going to be able to able to punch through that canopy with his knife...”
But he took that big knife with the serrated spine, and with both hands shoved it up and it went right through the canopy...he poked a few more times, and big chunks came out, he sawed a little, and within 30-60 seconds, he was able to stand up!
I was pretty amazed. I didn’t realize the curve of the canopy provided the same strength to an external intrusion that the dome of a person’s skull does, but from the inside...well, it is pretty weak!
“I wonder about the wisdom of not having someone manning the boom to keep an eye on things”
No one is manning the booms today on the F-18s with pods.