UCAV/UAV/UAS News and discussion 2015

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19 years 9 months

Posts: 12,109

Fueled in flight: X-47B first to complete autonomous aerial refueling

The X-47B successfully conducted the first ever Autonomous Aerial Refeuling (AAR) of an unmanned aircraft April 22, completing the final test objective under the Navy's Unmanned Combat Air System demonstration program.

http://www.navair.navy.mil/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.NAVAIRNewsStory&id=5880

http://s1.postimg.org/pr5tvqvpb/33484.jpg

http://i62.tinypic.com/24fg469.jpg

http://i57.tinypic.com/zuhvfl.jpg

http://alert5.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/334831.jpg

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14 years 2 months

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Lovely shots. Am I right in thinking that it's going to be retired now?

Member for

19 years 9 months

Posts: 12,109

Lovely shots. Am I write in thinking that it's going to be retired now?

Yup..

Member for

19 years 9 months

Posts: 12,109

Member for

19 years 9 months

Posts: 12,109

Is This Proof That The US Air Force Can Aerially Refuel Stealth Drones?

NO! End of article. The timing of the photo release is interesting but it doesn't prove anything. If the person or persons supplying him with pictures were remotely interested in proving anything they would have showed a picture even on the ground showing that the Sentinel is even capable of receiving fuel in the first place.

Its like using this picture, and claiming that the B-52 can land on a carrier :) -

http://www.nycaviation.com/newspage/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/b52-carrier-flyby-630-620x413.jpg

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15 years 5 months

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not land, but take off as seen in the pic above,
in a joint venture, USAF & USN verified that it could perform a Doolittle raid today too

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14 years 2 months

Posts: 4,619

bring_it_on, clearly you have the wrong image there. This must be the accurate image of the B52 landing trials:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]237319[/ATTACH]
:D

What do you make of the suggestion that there is a bigger version of the RQ170 knocking around? I note that some on Secret Projects don't like this story because of the lack of evidence of refuelling infrastructure on the RQ170, but if it were a different variant in the images...... or perhaps LM released it to steal the limelight from NG?

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19 years 9 months

Posts: 12,109

What do you make of the suggestion that there is a bigger version of the RQ170 knocking around?

Could very well be, plus we already know that the RQ-180 exists. My point was that either a RQ170+ or an RQ180 may have demonstrated/accomplished Mid-Air autonomous refueling in the past, but from the blog that posted the picture, and the picture themselves we cannot assume to be any evidence in support of that.