Originally Posted by
KC10 FATboy
The future of UAVs remains to be seen. Use of UAVs could become limited via rules of war, Geneva Convention, etc. But even so, UAVs have demostrated air-to-air refueling. And since they're probably not going to be flying formation off the wing of a tanker, I can only imagine how much that's going to slow the air-refueling game.
Interesting point. I tend to suspect there will be a push to ban UCAVs at some point...but it will be led by the have-nots and opposed by the heavy-hitters (US and Europe). I doubt such an accord will be agreed to by enough folks to make it stick
UAV's will presumably become regular tanker customers but due to their longer endurance you will probably not need as many booms per UAV. Also by the time they run out of gas UAV's tend to need to RTB anyway to re-store, mx, etc. Serious UCAVs will have less endurance than ISR birds though.