File:FA-18 Automated Aerial Refueling.ogv

This 53 second movie clip shows an F/A-18 Automated Aerial Refueling (AAR). Engineers at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center are evaluating the capability of an F/A-18A aircraft as an in-flight refueling tanker to develop analytical models for an automated aerial refueling system for unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). The Automated Aerial Refueling (AAR) project is documenting how an operational tanker's drogue basket responds when in the presence of the receiver aircraft. Currently little flight-obtained dynamics data exists. For this modeling study, a second F/A-18 is flying as the receiver aircraft. The F/A-18A tanker aircraft is undergoing flight test envelope expansion with an aerodynamic pod containing air-refueling equipment carried beneath the fuselage. During the 1990s, the refueling pod was integrated on the newer F/A-18E/F. According to AAR project engineers, the objectives of the recent flights at NASA Dryden are to demonstrate the operational flight envelope and to assess the free-stream hose and drogue dynamics on the earlier model F/A-18s. NASA Dryden's Automated Aerial Refueling (AAR) project is conducting flight tests to develop analytical models of the flowfield of an aerial refueling drogue for a future automated aerial refueling system for unmanned air vehicles. The study is part of a larger Automated Aerial Refueling program led by Air Force Research Laboratory. AAR is using two of Dryden's highly instrumented F/A-18s. The first aircraft (No. 847) has been modified into a tanker by fitting it with an aerial refueling pod similar to that used by the NAVY on S-3 Vikings and F/A-18E/Fs. The second aircraft (No. 845) is flying as the receiver aircraft during the study to quantify the free-stream hose and drogue dynamics. Keywords: Dryden; AAR; Automated Aerial Refueling; UAV; F/A-18; Dryden Flight Research Center