This new “Super Sentinel” could stay aloft for weeks with help from local fuel tankers
Outside of small battery operated drones (aka “unmanned aerial vehicles” (UAVs)), most military drones run on the same thing that traditional combat aircraft do – fossil fuels. But fuel is, of course, a finite resource limiting the range of the U.S. military’s fleet of fully-controlled and semi-autonomous drones. Newly leaked photos reveal that the military may at long last have a dramatically improved solution for that – at least for certain bleeding-edge drone models.
I. Boom Appears to Refuel Drone in Leaked Photos
The photos were obtained by Gawker Media’s Jalopnik on the subsite “Foxtrot Alpha.” The author of the piece, Tyler Rogoway says he “would rate as good” the source of the photos. He also states that the source “wishes to remain anonymous.”
The photos depict a drone craft preparing to refuel (the actual connection isn’t shown, but the source say it happened soon thereafter). Here’s the original photos:
And here’s a set of brightness/tint autocorrected versions I created in Photoshop:
Assuming these are authentic, they are a big deal for two reasons. First, to date the only photographic evidence we have of the U.S. military employing aerial refueling on a drone comes from a Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC) release from last month, in which the defense contractor offered up photographic proof that its U.S. Navy unmanned combat air vehicle demonstrator, the X-47B, successfully sipped fuel delivered from a Omega KC-707 tanker (a modified Boeing Comp. (BA) 707) via a probe-and-drogue approach.
To read the rest of his article as well as see the photos accompanying it, click here.
Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
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