Aerial Refueling

Aerial refueling, also called Air refueling or in-flight refueling (IFR) or air-to-air refueling (AAR) or tanking. Note that AAR also stands for ;After-Action ; and in aviation,IFR also stands for ;Instrument Flight Rules; (flight by instrument references only such as incloud ).Air refueling is the process of transferring fuel from one aircraft (the tanker) to another (thereceiver) during flight. This allows the receiving aircraft to remain airborne longer and, moreimportant, to extend its range and therefore those of its weapons or its deployment radius. Aseries of air refuelings can give range limited only by crew fatigue and engineering factors suchas engine oil consumption.Because the receiver aircraft can be topped up with extra fuel in the air, air refueling can allowa takeoff with a greater weapon payload, less fuel maintaining the allowed maximum takeoffweight.

Alternatively a shorter takeoff roll can be achieved because takeoff can be at a lighterweight before refuelling once airborne (as with the US SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft).Usually, the aircraft providing the fuel is specially designed for the task, although refuellingpods can be fitted to existing aircraft designs if the "probe and drogue" system it to be used(see later). The cost of the refueling equipment on both tanker and receiver aircraft and thespecialised aircraft handling of the aircraft to be refueled (very close "line astern" formationflying) has resulted in the activity only being used in military operations. There is no knownregular civilian in-flight refueling activity. In large-scale military operations, air refueling isextensively used. For instance, in the 1991 conflict with Iraq over its occupation of Kuwait andthe 2003 war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, all coalition air sorties were air-refueled except fora few short-range ground attack sorties in the Kuwait area