Buddy Refueling on the Carrier Deck

You will learn how a fighter with a pod becomes a tanker for another fighter and why carrier air wings rely on that trick. A buddy store lets probe equipped jets pass fuel to each other without a dedicated tanker in the circuit.

Why a carrier wing needs its own tankers

If you launch from a carrier you cannot call a land based tanker every time you need fuel. A combat force without specialized tanker support, for instance a carrier air wing, uses buddy tanking to stretch the range of its strike aircraft. You gain combat radius for attack, fighter and bomber aircraft, and you keep patrol aircraft airborne longer, so fewer aircraft can cover a given mission. Tankers act in that sense as force multipliers. You also ease a basing problem. An aircraft that must limit takeoff weight because of a short deck or short runway faces a choice between fuel and munitions, and aerial refueling removes much of that difficulty because the jet can launch with a full combat load and top up right after takeoff.

What exactly is a buddy store

A buddy store, also called a buddy pod, is an external pod carried on an aircraft hardpoint that holds a hose and drogue system with a hose drum unit. When you fit it to a fighter or bomber, that aircraft can be reconfigured to tank other aircraft. In another classic carrier use, the jet takes off with a heavier than usual weapon load and less fuel than the task would normally require, then it takes fuel from a hose equipped buddy after launch. The Royal Navy used that method with the Supermarine Scimitar, the de Havilland Sea Vixen and the Blackburn Buccaneer, and in the Buccaneer case the tank and hose unit sat in the bomb bay. You still see the same logic when a United States Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet acts as buddy tanker for a French Navy Rafale, as photographed over the Arabian Sea in 2015.

How do you fly a probe into a basket

The tanker flies straight and level and extends the hose and drogue, which trails behind and below under normal aerodynamic forces. You arrive as receiver with the probe extended if your type needs it, and you use normal flight controls to fly the probe directly into the basket. The drogue, sometimes called a basket or para-drogue, looks like a shuttlecock and steadies the hose while its funnel guides your probe toward the hose coupling. The hose connects to the hose drum unit, and when not in use it reels fully inside. If you want the mechanical detail of that hose and basket coupling you can study how the probe valve stays closed until it seats in the forward receptacle of the drogue, then opens to let fuel pass. You aim from behind and below, not level with the drogue, with a closure rate near two knots, about walking speed, to push the hose several feet into the drum unit and make a solid couple. Too little closure gives an incomplete connection and no fuel flow, at times with a leak. Too much closure is dangerous because it can set off a strong sideways oscillation in the hose and shear the probe tip.

What do the green, amber and red lights tell you

After first contact you push the hose and drogue forward a certain distance, typically a few feet, while the drum slowly reels the hose back. That action opens the tanker main refueling valve so fuel can flow to the drogue under the correct pressure, provided the tanker crew has energized the pump. Tension stays balanced by a motor in the hose drum unit, so as you move forward and aft the hose pays out and retracts instead of bending and putting side load on your probe. The drogue itself is light, usually soft canvas webbing, so even in smooth air the bow wave of your approaching aircraft can push it around and make the plug harder. Fuel flow is normally shown by a green light near the hose unit in the buddy tanking hose procedure described on the cited page. If the hose goes in too far or not far enough a cutoff switch stops fuel flow, usually with an amber light. Disengagement is ordered by the tanker pilot with a red light. The valves you mate are commonly built to a NATO standard first developed in the United Kingdom by Flight Refuelling Limited and deployed in the late 1940s and 1950s, which lets drogue tankers of one nation feed probe aircraft of another.

Why is the KC-135 adapter called the iron maiden

The probe and drogue system does not mate with flying boom equipment, and that incompatibility shapes planning when mixed forces operate together. Boom equipped tankers such as the United States Air Force KC-135 and the French Air Force KC-135FR can be field converted with a special adapter unit that puts a hose and drogue on the end of the articulated boom instead of the usual nozzle. The boom operator holds the boom still while you fly your probe into the basket. The difference you feel is the basket. Most hose units use a soft canvas drogue that guides a slightly off center probe into the receptacle. The adapter uses a steel basket that naval aviators call the iron maiden because it does not forgive. Touched even slightly off center it can pivot out of place and slap the fuselage. The hose behavior is also different. It does not retract into a drum. It bends with how far you push toward the boom. Pushed too far it can loop around the probe or nose, harm the windscreen or touch the rigid boom. Not pushed far enough it drops out and fueling stops. The position keeping tolerance is much smaller, so holding contact on an adapter is markedly harder than on a traditional hose and drogue. When fueling is done you back off carefully until the probe valve parts from the basket valve, and an off center separation can strike the probe or skin just as an off center contact can.

How can one tanker serve boom and drogue receivers

You solve mixed force refueling by carrying more than one system or by adding pods. Some tankers hold both a boom and one or more complete hose and drogue systems. The United States Air Force KC-10 has a flying boom and a separate Cobham built hose and drogue system. Both sit on the centerline at the tail, so only one can be used at a time, yet the same mission can serve receptacle and probe aircraft without landing to fit an adapter. Other tankers keep the centerline boom free and add hose units elsewhere. Many KC-135s carry dual underwing units known as Multi-point Refueling System pods, while some KC-10s and A330 MRTTs carry similar underwing pods, called Wing Air Refueling Pods on the KC-10. Multipoint hose systems can feed two or more aircraft at once, which can cut time spent refueling by as much as 75 percent for a four aircraft strike package. The same compatibility point appears in procurement. The Royal Canadian Air Force operates probe and drogue refuelers while the F-35A refuels only by flying boom, unlike the United States Navy and Marine Corps F-35B and F-35C versions that use probe and drogue, so conversion cost became part of the early 2010s political debate around that purchase.

Will an unmanned tanker replace buddy Hornets

Carrier history shows why the question matters. The United States Navy often used the KA-3 Skywarrior from carriers to feed F-4s, A-4 Skyhawks, A-6 Intruders and A-7 Corsair IIs. That fuel gave a returning pilot extra landing attempts when short on fuel and trying for a trap, and it also supported fighters on extended combat air patrol. United States Marine Corps jets based in South Vietnam and Thailand used KC-130 Hercules transports in the same role, and a Marine KC-130 was later photographed feeding a pair of CH-53E Super Stallions. A newer answer is the Boeing MQ-25 Stingray, an aerial refueling drone that came from the Carrier-Based Aerial-Refueling System program, itself grown from the earlier Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike program. The Navy named Boeing winner on 30 August 2018 with an 805 million dollar development contract for four MQ-25A aircraft to be completed by August 2024, then ordered three more test aircraft on 2 April 2020 for seven in total, with talk of a 13 billion dollar program of 72 aircraft. The type first flew on 19 September 2019 after a road move from the Boeing plant at Lambert International Airport in St. Louis across the Mississippi River to MidAmerica St. Louis Airport conjoined with Scott Air Force Base. In December 2020 Boeing flew it with a Cobham aerial refueling store mounted externally. On 4 June 2021 it passed fuel to an F/A-18F Super Hornet from MidAmerica Airport in Mascoutah, Illinois, with support from Air Test and Evaluation Squadron VX-23, in a mission near 4.5 hours with many dry and wet connects for more than 10 minutes and 325 pounds transferred in total, followed by tests with the E-2 and F-35C. If you track unmanned tanker development you see the stated naval goal to deliver 15,000 pounds of fuel in total to 4 to 6 airplanes at a range of 500 nautical miles, and to stretch the Super Hornet 450 nautical mile unrefueled combat radius to beyond 700 nautical miles. The drone uses one Rolls-Royce AE 3007N turbofan of more than 10,000 pounds thrust, a variant of the engine in the MQ-4C Triton, with a less stealthy shape than a flying wing but with shaped fuselage, flush inlet shielding engine blades from radar and a V tail. The Navy stood up Unmanned Carrier Launched Multi-Role Squadron 10 at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland on 1 October 2022 as the Fleet Replacement Squadron using four aircraft for testing and development of maintenance and operating procedures, with an operational unit VUQ-11 established on 1 April 2026 for Naval Air Station Point Mugu in California and a further unit VUQ-12 planned.

The Wikipedia page on Buddy store is the hose and drogue section of the aerial refueling article. It defines the external pod and hose drum unit, it walks through closure, lights and disconnect, and it covers adapters, multipoint stations and the iron maiden warning. It also sets the carrier cases and the cross service compatibility issue in context.

You can watch a carrier plug from the receiver cockpit view, note the below and behind start, the walking speed closure, and the push forward before the green light, then call each cue aloud as the hose moves.