bradboom

Doing the same to me, too. Hitting close to target, but no cigar.

True to real life. To see your instruments, tilt your head back and look under the nogs.

IRL, a MPRS KC-135 couldn’t refuel with both the boom and the drogue at the same time. The fuel plumbing won’t allow for it & aircraft being refueled would bump wingtips. Receivers are usually deconflicted by timing, but there are occasions when boom & drogue recievers show up at the same time. Typically, we’d refuel the boom receiver first, since the offload rate is so much faster, then do the drogue recievers next.

Retired boom operator here. There are 3 ways of disconnecting to keep from ripping off the nozzle. The system automatically disconnects when the boom is near a limit...up, down, forward, aft, left or right. The boom operator has a disconnect trigger, like mentioned, and is the preferred method of disconnecting. As for the receiver pilot disconnecting, we didn’t count on them doing that, but we knew they can. We put emphasis on the boom operator disconnecting since he/she has the full view of the air refueling and can clear the boom from the receiver in a hurry. Also, the lights under the jet on the -135 & KC-10 are dim IRL. I spent 20 years telling pilots “sorry, sir, the lights are full bright!” On the new KC-46 the director lights are LED, so that problem is solved!

That is pretty much the point of SEAD. Don’t have to destroy the anti-air site...just keep their heads down with overwhelming HARM presence so the strikers can ingress/egress unscathed. The “S” in SEAD stands for suppression.

No heavies of any era went further under the tanker than the B-52. The only one that goes further but not by much is the B-2. The bow wave from a heavy receiver pushes the tanker around excessively and could cause the tanker to pitch down into the receiver causing a mid-air collision. The autopilot helps but can be overwhelmed by a fast-approaching jet. Fighters don’t have that problem.

The boom operator in Air Force One was terrible too. He basically drug the boom across the nose of the jet once he wasn’t in contact anymore. Any boomer worth his salt would have retracted it right away. Also, the boom can’t be struck like a match like that in Air Force One either. Cool action movie...very light on the facts.

The boom was developed in the 50s to offload tens of thousands of pounds of fuel to a Strategic bomber to fly nukes to far away lands, so it was optimized for a big jet that isn’t maneuverable, to connect to. The Navy says the drogue is easier since they simply have to fly into the basket, but with the boom, the receiver simply stabilizes inside a box near the boom and the boom operator does the rest of the work connecting to the receiver. As the Air Force gained more aircraft through the 50s and 60s, they made the decision to stick with one type of tanker to keep costs down and have all AF aircraft outfitted with a receptacle. However, the boom can offload gas about 4 times faster for a heavy and twice as fast for a fighter (can’t use as many pumps) compared to the drogue. I’ve been deployed and refueled F-18s using the drogue and it seems like they take on gas slightly faster than they burn it! Refueling with the boom in DCS is more difficult than in real life, because there is some wiggle room when lining up with the boom. The boom operator can make contact up to 10 degrees left and right and vertically, but in DCS you have to be spot in the middle for the boom to line up and connect. Maybe some day we will see that modeled better in DCS.

Retired USAF boom operator here. IRL the lights are very dim on the -135. Pilots were always asking to turn the lights up, but they are required to be full bright in daytime. So, kudos to ED for the realism! Each receiver came up with their own visual references to use in lieu of the lights...such as making an upside down triangle using the tip of the boom and the inboard engines, or a T with an antenna and a white stripe under the jet (never saw it, I flew on the inside!). On the new KC-46, the lights are LED and can be seen very well day and night, but no chance of seeing that in DCS!

There are a small number of KC-135s that do have refueling receptacles. They are the KC-135RT models...7 of them. They are used for special ops refueling. A probe for drogue refueling would be highly impractical. You can offload gas 4-6 times faster using the boom, which is why you see B-52s and other large jets refueling with the boom. With the drogue, you are offloading gas slightly faster than the receiver is burning it. When I see pics of foreign heavy jets with a probe, I shudder thinking how long they have to hand onto the basket to fill their tanks.

Retired USAF boom operator here. Don’t worry about quick flow...that is an expedited method to get fighters on & off the boom in a hurry by having them stack up behind the boom. In fact, at one fighter bade I was assigned to, the fighters pilots didn’t want to do quick flow because they thought it wasn’t safe. Join up on the left wing, slide over to precontact (astern, according to ATP-56B or the US SRD) and transition to the right wing for post AR. Of course, if you are flight lead or single ship, you can proceed direct to precontact.

I think they were attacking from all quarters...we never saw them until they zoomed away. Our copilot was all excited yelling “look at ‘em go!”, but our pilot was more glum saying “you realize that guy shot us 3 times in 30 seconds?”.

Gunnery shots are difficult...just keep practicing. When I was in the USAF on EC-130s back in the mid 90s, we were at Nellis AFB for Green Flag. After the morning push was over & everyone was heading back to base, the AWACS asked us to stay in our orbit for 30 extra minutes. There was a flight of 4 F-16s that wanted to practice intercepts on us. We were told afterwards that performing gunnery attacks are hard, but even more difficult on slow-moving targets & this was a rare opportunity for them to practice on us. So, don’t feel bad if you can’t get it right the first time, the professionals have trouble too!

One more word of advice, if you want to move forward or back, it is a minimum of 3 throttle movements...one throttle push to move forward, one pull to stop moving forward and one smaller push to stabilize. And, from a B-52 pilot I met, it can be sometimes upwards of 8 throttle movements to move in one direction. And if you throttle forward, even minimally, you are gaining speed, which increases lift, which will raise your nose and climb. You will get the opposite, when reducing power. You can see it happen when flying straight and level in the F-16 and add a little bit of power. So, anticipate and expect to climb or dive slightly when adding or subtracting power when approaching the tanker.. Practice, practice, practice!

Hi, there! When I was in the USAF (retired 2 years ago) I was an instructor at the tanker school house in Oklahoma. Air Refueling is very difficult and is harder in the sim because you don’t have a seat of the pants feel for how you are moving around minutely. The advice you got about practicing formation flying first is spot on...try flying #2 in formation or off the tanker’s wing and maintaining a position for a long period. After you are good at that, then try moving to precontact, when you can maintain precontact precisely, move in to contact. Believe it or not, when real pilots learn air refueling for real, their first flight is just maintaining precontact. They won’t move into contact until a subsequent flight. And this is after they have had a year of pilot training under their belt flying formation with others. Above all, just practice, use small inputs and when you get frustrated, just back out and cool down. Right before I retired, our C-17 squadron commander in Oklahoma commented that when his student pilots need remedial training, far and above, it was for air refueling as opposed to the other skills they need (airdrop, assault landings, etc.) so don’t feel bad about it being difficult.