The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in a demonstration with NASA has performed the first-ever hands-off probe and drogue air refueling mission, employing a NASA F/A-18 operating as an unmanned test bed. According to a DARPA release, the Autonomous Airborne Refueling Demonstration used GPS navigation and an optical tracker to precisely position the refueling probe into the basket lowered from an aerial refueling aircraft. Air Force Lt. Col. Jim McCormick, DARPA program manager, said using the probe and drogue method provided “the most challenging [situation] for autonomous systems.” The capability “applies equally to the boom and receptacle method used by most Air Force aircraft,” he added. The flight was the seventh in a planned series of eight, but was the first one to demonstrate a hands-off approach. (How, or if, this gels with last year’s effort by the Air Force Test Pilot School is unclear.)
The U.S. sent Air Force F-16s over central Syria in a show of force following the Dec. 13 killing of two U.S. Army Soldiers and one American civilian interpreter by a gunman linked to the Islamic State group.
