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Palletized Air to Air Refueling Kit for Medium and Light Military Transport Aircraft
Abstract:
Air to Air refueling (AAR) operations are typically performed with dedicated tanker A/C. Most existing tankers are derived from civil airliners like the A330MRTT from Airbus Military or from military transport A/C with permanent modifications for the tanker role. For being able to refuel in flight some type of receivers like medium and light turboprops, helicopters and certain UAVs, the tanker aircraft should be able to fly at low speeds. For that role medium/small size turboprop military transport aircraft, like the C295 from Airbus Military are ideally suited.
This paper proposes a new palletized AAR kit for conversion of a transport A/C into a tanker. The kit includes all the needed air refueling systems, and can be installed on an existing military transport aircraft with rear cargo door ramp without big permanent modifications to the base platform.
The kit can also integrate an autonomous electrical system for powering the power-hungry refueling systems with no power demand to the base A/C. It includes power storage and supply to the pumps and refueling systems as well as energy recovery from the refueling systems.
With this kit the conversion of a military transport aircraft into a tanker aircraft or viceversa becomes a matter of hours, as opposed to permanent or semi-permanent conversions existing on the actual tanker fleet in operation.
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