superdog
Junior Member
Here you go.
He writes textbook and teaches the PLAAF about aerial refueling. There are a few things he discussed on this topic:
He writes textbook and teaches the PLAAF about aerial refueling. There are a few things he discussed on this topic:
- The soft tube flexes at a sine wave pattern, the pilot must avoid trying to follow the oscillation, but keep steady and wait for the right moment
- It is easier to do aerial refueling at night then at day because there are less distraction
- He said some foreign air-force has problematic guidelines on aerial refueling. He mentioned the RAF's guideline which says a 3m/s speed difference is good enough, he thought that's a bad idea. The PLA's guideline is less than 1m/s, which he claims is much safer.
- In comparing flying boom and probe-drogue style refueling, he said although the boom has higher flow rate, it is less ideal because the each tanker can only refuel one aircraft at a time. In most cases there will be multiple planes waiting to refuel so a probe-drogue system is more efficient. Even the US is starting to add probe-drogue systems in addition to flying boom at the middle.
- One advantage of flying boom is that it is easier for the pilot. The probe-drogue style could also be made easier if the tube is long enough. If it is sub-20m like on current PLAAF tanker (HY-6?) than the oscillation will be bigger, but if it is 25m or longer like on the Il-78 the drogue will become more stable. If in the future the PLA adopts tankers larger than the C919, aerial refueling will be a very easy task.
- He believes the chance of adopting Y-20 as tankers is 100%, but the R&D will take at least 2 years (did not mention if it has started or not).
- Civilian platforms (e.g. C919) are more suitable to be used as the base for modification. Two main reasons: safety and economy. Civilian platforms has much higher production numbers therefore the manufacturer can afford to subject it to much more testing on the ground, whereas for military platforms a lot of testing would have to be done in actual flying.
- Aerial refueling for unmanned aircraft is made possible with modern AI that uses experiential learning, he used AlphaGo as an example. Traditional automation based on logic is not good enough in this scenario. With these learning based AI, aerial refueling and carrier landing will not be a problem for unmanned aircraft. He said China will not be troubled by this.
