How long does it take? It depends.
First of all, the video doesn’t do justice to just how hard it is to stay on the boom in a BUFF. It’s a workout. I’ve seen it from both sides—I’ve spent hours in BUFFs refueling and hours in the observer station watching them refuel. I’ll let
@boomers_ass and
@MCCCANM describe the boomer and tanker pilot perspective; I’ll stick with the BUFF.
From the tanker side, the pilots’ inputs look 180 degrees out of phase with the aircraft motion. From the BUFF jump seat, you see the pilot anticipate where the plane will be in 1–2 seconds and respond. It’s an intense dance in the front seat manipulating the yoke, rudder pedals, and 8 throttles.
Oh yeah, the BUFF doesn’t have fuel center-of-gravity computers. It has a co-pilot. All of the fuel system valves are on the co-pilot’s side of the cockpit, so the co-pilot has to manually monitor and control which tank the fuel flows to.
That makes for an interesting flight when your pilot is doing an IP upgrade and demonstrating the AC upgrade part of the syllabus. The soon-to-be IP sits on the right and the IP/EP on the left. The right-side guy has to demonstrate all of the boom limits—up, down, left, right, and all combinations—while “teaching” the EP, transferring fuel to the right tanks, and not falling off the boom.
I’ve done sorties where we booked a tanker for two hours straight of that. Did I mention how turbulent it is behind the tanker? Two large airplanes in very close proximity—the aerodynamic interaction of the tanker’s wing vortices with the BUFF—makes it challenging and exhausting for the entire crew. Everyone has to be strapped in and masked up.
So, back to the original question: you can spend 2 hours on the boom. Been there, done that, have the T-shirt. Not all of that is passing gas. The KC-135 can carry up to 212,000 pounds of gas and pass it at up to 6,000 pounds per minute. Do the math and it’s about 35 minutes. The BUFF can carry over 300,000 pounds of gas. The KC-46 carries the same amount but can transfer at 8,000 pounds per minute.
For long missions with 60,000–120,000-pound offloads, we scheduled 1–1.5 hours to allow for disconnects and both crews to get some beans.
Drop a comment below if you want to know more 👇
