Innovative Concepts for Stabilization and Control of Aerial Refueling Drogues

Arizona Paradrogue Systems, a drogue coupling assembly, a drogue coupling assembly development and manufacturing firm and SySense, Inc, systems development firm specializing in navigation and control design for autonomous air refueling systems have teamed together to develop a fully stabilized and controllable drogue. APS and SySense plan to generate an analytical model of a stabilized/controllable drogue through numerical analysis simulating tanker, receiver and drogue bodies in turbulent air as well as navigation and electro-optical devices as sensors to provide control and feedback information to actuators installed on the drogue. The design will be based on existing APS drogue designs and will bolt on to existing drogue refueling systems requiring no additional mechanical modifications to the hose/reel system. Phase I investigation shall focus on using the C-130 high speed basket as the model in order to demonstrate the concept. Transverse force data on the drogue shall be obtained through wind tunnel testing using a basket modified with manual devices to simulate canopy manipulation. This data shall then be combined with sensor and navigation data to complete the analysis. The Phase I option shall expand the analysis to include C-130 Low Speed basket, Buddy Store and Variable Speed Drive. A full scale prototype will be constructed to demonstrate the concept in the Option phase.