Military Aviation: What Is Aerial Refueling ,How is Aerial Aefueling done?

What Is Aerial Refueling?

Aerial refueling, also referred to as air refueling, in-flight refueling (IFR), air-to-air refueling (AAR), and tanking, is the process of transferring aviation fuel from one military aircraft (the tanker) to another (the receiver) during flight.

 

 

 

How Is Aerial Aerial Fueling Done?  

Well , I Defined Some Of Points About Aerial Fueling.

Following Points Give More Clear Picture How Exactly it Works !

1. The tanker puts on an auto-pilot, and the receiver flies formation positions to get to the boom.  The first position is on the left wing, "observation" position.  When you show up as a two-ship however, #2 will go to the left wing, and #1 will go direct to "pre-contact".  Pre-contact is one-ship's length away from the boom. 

 

2.  Once cleared to "contact" you advance slowly to align your AR receptacle with the nose.  USAF aircraft with boom receptacles are hydraulically connected to the boom.  However, the "boomer" (the guy flying the boom) requires you to be "stabilized" within' 6-9 feet before he'll move the boom to your receptacle.

 

Once the boom is connected, you just fly to maintain your current position.  There are director lights on the bottom of the tanker that the boomer can use to direct you fore/aft/up/down, but in the A-10 they are very hard to see since the boom is blocking your view.  For this reason, my personal technique is to be slightly offset inside the zone so I can see the lights. 

The boom connects with about 2000 lbs of force in the A-10.  You CAN break the boom off if you tweak it right (this has happened before) but usually the ~40,000 lbs A-10 will pull free prior to anything going wrong.  The boomer can also force a disconnect if the boom reaches it's limits, or he feels an unsafe situation is developing. 

 

When you are done, you simply disconnect with a button on the stick, and fly to the right wing and wait for #2 to get gas. 

Bottom of a KC-135, the director lights are at the bottom of the photo.  Up/Down are on the left row, and Forwad/Aft are on the right.

Finding the tanker at night in the weather isn't that hard.  The tankers will turn on their lights and you can see them through the clouds pretty easy when you get within a nautical mile with night vision goggles.  Other fighters have radars of course, so that makes the rejoin even easier.  Newer tankers are on the data-link now, so we can see their position from anywhere in the AO and even send them text messages.

A-10 Specific points:

There are differences in the KC-10 and KC-135.  The KC-10 has a more significant bow-wave that makes it difficult to get into contact position.  Since the A-10 refuels around 205 knots (IAS), both tankers need to roll their flaps down when they are fat on gas.  This requires you to "dig down", ie: push the nose over to accelerate to move from pre-contact to contact, in order to push through the wave of air this creates.  The KC-10 also has a much stronger boom.  When attached, you'll feel the KC-10 boom move you back into position, whereas the KC-135 doesn't have as much authority.

Night refueling is not fun, especially if the tanker and receiver are lights (near) out due to a hostile environment.  The A-10 has lights that only illuminate on the top and in the receptacle for this situation, since the boomers do not wear night vision goggles; they need to be able to align the boom and the aircraft somehow.  For the same reason as listed previous (the A-10 receptacle in front of the airplane) the boomer will not see the A-10 until very late in the contact position so you end up having to "plug yourself".   Other boomers will get nervous when they see the A-10 suddenly appear (due to weather, or lighting) and move the boom out of the way, causing it to hit the nose.  Every A-10 in the fleet has dents in the nose due to both pilot and boomer errors while air refueling, and most of that is due to night AR.