---
title: "Midair Refueling for Naval Jets, No Pilot Necessary"
date: 2026-11-12T05:30:00-05:00
author: University of Maryland
canonical_url: "https://today.umd.edu/midair-refueling-for-naval-jets-no-pilot-necessary"
section: Articles
---
# Midair Refueling for Naval Jets, No Pilot Necessary

*November 12, 2026* — by [John Tucker](/author/john-tucker)


> As Navy establishes an autonomous fleet, UMD researchers chart path for tanking up in the sky.

*The 908th Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron conducts an aerial refuel with a French Rafale from the Armée de l'Air over Southwest Asia. The 908th is a KC-10 tanker squadron assigned to the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing, Al Dhafra Air Base, United Arab Emirates and enables coalition partners to execute their mission further developing relationships throughout the region. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Joshua Williams) — UMD aerospace engineers have advanced technology to help unmanned military jets refuel autonomously. The system could save the government hundreds of thousands of dollars. (Photo by Air Force Tech. Sgt. Joshua Williams)*

During a 25-year career as a naval aviator that included several “Spain to Maine” flights, Donald “Bucket” Costello regularly refueled his speedy EA-18G aircraft in midair to avoid losing time island hopping across the ocean, even though the maneuver posed risks.

Zooming along at 300 mph, sometimes through turbulence, Costello steered his jet toward a tanker plane carrying a 100-foot hose and “drogue”— a 2-foot funnel serving as a combination of a wing and a fuel cap — then nudged a 4-foot probe inside. With just a 4-inch margin for error, the stakes of midair refueling are high for an experienced pilot: “If you don’t practice, you can crash.”

But how do you teach this skill — one that military pilots have taken pains to learn since jets swooped onto the scene in the 1950s — to future squadrons of unmanned fighter aircraft that the U.S. military aims to fly alongside conventional aircraft? Being able to refuel autonomous aircraft without landing would greatly extend their range and endurance, which is critical for carrier-based jets.

That capability is just what Costello, now a University of Maryland assistant professor of aerospace engineering, is attempting to make possible. In [a study accepted](https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/6.2026-0309) last month by the AIAA *Journal of Aerospace Information Systems*, he and colleagues demonstrated the feasibility of probe-and-drogue refueling with unmanned fighter planes using data from artificial intelligence-enhanced videos and a virtual reality studio. Funded by a grant from the Lockheed Martin Corp., the research was a collaboration between the A. James Clark School of Engineering [MATRIX Lab](https://matrix.umd.edu/), which specializes in autonomous robotics, and UMD’s [Institute for Health Computing](https://ihc.umd.edu/) (IHC).

Autonomous airborne technology has become a cornerstone of modern warfare, and in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, fighting has even featured drones that remove humans from so-called "kill chain" decision-making entirely. But deploying autonomous fighter-sized aircraft will be a more complex challenge. Within the next decade, the Navy intends to dramatically increase the number of unmanned aircraft within a carrier air wing, requiring autonomous aerial refueling.

But the economic hurdles to developing self-piloting algorithms are high. While outfitting a Waymo with autonomous capabilities can be done relatively cheaply through ground-level data collection, gathering data in the air costs the government $45,000 per flight hour, said Costello, the director of test and evaluation of autonomous systems at the MATRIX lab, who has studied autonomous aerial refueling for the past five years

Considering the conditions pilots deal with — different light patterns, cloud cover and weather, for example — “you may need 50,000 images to train an algorithm to refuel,” he said. “The amount of flight hours you’d need is almost ‘unobtanium.’”

Costello and his team devised a workaround. Rather than take to the skies, the researchers built a drogue-detection model by superimposing images of an actual drogue onto video images of a tanker jet and fuel hose whipping through the air.


*UMD’s HoloCamera — Inside UMD’s HoloCamera, the researchers built a 3D model of an F/A-18 drogue, then superimposed images of the tool onto videos of actual and synthetic refueling missions.*




**Topics:** [Research](https://today.umd.edu/tags/research)


**Tags:** [Aerospace Engineering](https://today.umd.edu/topic/aerospace-engineering), [Robotics](https://today.umd.edu/topic/robotics), [Artificial Intelligence](https://today.umd.edu/topic/artificial-intelligence), [Research](https://today.umd.edu/topic/research)


**Units:** [A. James Clark School of Engineering](https://today.umd.edu/topic/james-clark-school-engineering), [Institute for Health Computing](https://today.umd.edu/topic/institute-for-health-computing)