The European aircraft manufacturer Airbus, in cooperation with the Singapore Air Force, was able to have the world's first solution for automatic aerial refueling during daylight certified. This is optionally available for the A330 MRTT.

The capability, certified by the Spanish National Institute of Aerospace Engineering (INTA), is part of the new Smart MRTT developed by Airbus. The A3R system requires no additional equipment on the receiving aircraft and is intended to reduce air refueling operator (ARO) workload, improve safety and optimize the air refueling transfer rate (AAR) under operational conditions to enable air superiority.

“The A3R capability certification is the result of a successful journey that began in 2018 with the world's first automated contact with a boom system in a joint operation with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Since then, we have achieved further “world firsts” in aviation thanks to the support of our customers, particularly through the significant involvement of our partner RSAF, a launch customer and the first operator to benefit from this groundbreaking capability. The A330 MRTT continues to extend its technological lead with superior in-flight refueling capabilities,” said Jean-Brice Dumont, Head of Military Air Systems at Airbus Defense and Space.

These technological building blocks will be tested in flight throughout 2023, with a final end-to-end demonstration in mid-2024, both using an A310 as tanker and DT-25 target drones as receiver aircraft. The technologies developed as part of the Airbus Auto'Mate demonstrator will enable a breakthrough advance in the level of autonomy of current air refueling operations (AAR) to reduce crew fatigue and training costs, improve safety and efficiency, and pioneer unmanned air refueling operations (including unmanned AAR operations), a capability much in demand for future defense scenarios. Auto'Mate is the first UpNext demonstrator launched, developed and completed in Spain.