Military aviation is one area of high technology and mass production that we love to cover here at Engineering.com. Something very interesting happened last week with the X-47B. This is a prototype autonomous vehicle, a drone, made by the Northrop Grumman Corporation.
Together with the Navy, Northrop Grumman successfully demonstrated fully autonomous mid-air refueling with the X-47B.
What that means is the X-47B found an aerial tanker, hooked up to it and refueled itself with no intervention from a pilot.
Of course aerial refueling is not new. It’s been done since the 1950s, so we regard it as an everyday occurrence. B-52s have done it, B-47s, way back in the days of the Cold War have done it and not much is thought about it these days.
What’s significant about this is that it has larger implications for geopolitics as a whole.
If autonomous vehicles can refuel themselves than essentially they can stay on station permanently. Drones could remain over possible trouble spots for days, weeks, perhaps months at a time.
So what this means politically, for President Obama for example, is he may not need large-standing carrier task groups to project US force globally. He may simply send swarms of autonomously refueling drones to hover overhead for reconnaissance and other military purposes.
So it’s maybe a shift in the way power is projected.
It could be a shift in the way defense budgets are allocated.
In the long run one may wonder will there be a need for large carrier task groups, will there be a need for cruise missile carrying attack submarines? Difficult to say.
We know that Northrop Grumman began developing this refueling technology with both the Navy and the Air Force almost a decade ago.
They’re using both GPS and infrared imaging to make sure that if any system fails they have enough redundancy that they can still refuel the vehicle.
This flight testing began in 2012 and they used a manned Learjet as a surrogate for the X-47B.
The companies involved in this program give you a sense of the gravitas of this thing: Lockheed Martin, Pratt & Whitney, GKN Aerospace, Eton, GE, UTC Aerospace Systems, Dell, Honeywell, MOOG, Parker Aerospace, Rockwell Collins.
These are heavyweight players in the aviation industry. I expect that this autonomous vehicle capability, the ability to refuel themselves and stay in the air almost indefinitely may be the future.
If you’re a military pilot or thinking of becoming one, there might be a lonely airspace for you in the future.
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.