Program Overview
Autonomous Aerial Refueling (AAR) is an Air Force Research Laboratory program designed to develop the technology to enable a fighter jet-sized or bomber aircraft-sized unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to perform autonomous in-flight boom and receptacle refueling from the existing Air Force KC-135 tanker using operationally representative subsystems.

The AAR program effectively understands the end user’s concept of operations, gathers system requirements, evaluates available technology to meet requirements, designs a system when available technology doesn’t meet those needs, oversees system development, testing and implementation, and interfaces with the end-user community to bring a technology to the war fighter.

The expected benefits of AAR to UAV Air Force operations include increased combat aircraft radius, increased mission time, reduced response time for time-critical targets, reduced need for forward staging areas, and increased in-theater presence. Additionally, the AAR system is expected to be installed on manned aircraft to relieve pilots of one of their most stressful tasks during long missions. The WVHTC Foundation team is partnered with Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems to develop a computer vision based AAR system. This system is designed to utilize passive EO/IR sensors on-board the receiver aircraft to enable GPS-denied navigation and close formation flight to the tanker for autonomous refueling.

AAR utilizes existing and available technologies as well as new and emerging technologies in a manner that minimizes required receiver and tanker aircraft modifications, minimizes total system life cycle cost, and meets extraordinary safety limits to ensure the safety of the tanker crew, while meeting the specific needs of the warfighter.

Significant Accomplishments:
This initiative has achieved the following:

• EO/IR trade-off study of state of the art sensors completed with down selection to one that meets initial AAR requirements;
• EO/IR video from receiver aircraft during formation flight with KC-135 tanker recorded during two AAR flight tests;
• EO/IR flight test video analysis completed to identify potential navigation reference points on KC-135 tanker; and
• Computer vision algorithms designed, developed and tested at proof-of-concept technology level to track tanker navigation points in real-time.