RCAF working on Air-to-Air refueling for the Global 6500, MGen Smyth confirms (so let's talk about it)

Skies Magazine is out with a new interview with MGen Jeff Smyth, Chief of Air and Space Force Development, in the aftermath of last week’s Global announcement. On one quick note, this is a great interview that goes into exactly what the Global will provide to the RCAF and why the choice was made. I highly recommend you read it for that alone.

In the midst of this interview, though, MGen Smyth confirmed an interesting new development on his side of things. It would seem that the RCAF is working with Bombardier to integrate an air-to-air refueling capability onto the Global 6500.

Here is the quote from the article:

“We’re working with Bombardier to build that in-flight refueling capability onto the Global 6500, because I don’t think we’re the only customer that would be looking for that.”

The idea of adding an air-to-air refueling capability onto the Global 6500 is not a new development. It has been readily discussed for years, and having spoken to them, L3Harris is offering it as an option on Phoenix, something they previously did during the NATO competition.

I do want to point out that such a thing remains only a concept and has so far never been integrated onto the Global 6500. This development is not surprising, though it is a very welcomed development from my view. It also highlights once again the Air Force’s acknowledgment that operating in the Arctic requires aircraft that can be refueled outside of tapping into local infrastructure.

It’s a question I get asked a lot about. If you have stuck around here the last few months, you would note that I have brought up air refueling as a major requirement in the Airborne Early Warning Aircraft Project. While we don’t yet have the official HLMR, it is almost guaranteed to be there.

Quite a few of you question me on that capability. Why would something like a Global need it? Why couldn’t it just refuel at any number of regional airports? Why is it being treated as such a serious inclusion when barely anyone else seems to mention it?

This article provides me an excuse to sort of get into that and explain a bit as to why it’s such a serious requirement for the RCAF to have.

Why It’s Needed

To understand why air-to-air refueling is such a prevalent topic, we do need to clear up some basic facts that might get thrown around that, while not wrong, do miss a large chunk of the issue here.

You might hear the phrase “it’s only useful when it’s in the air” thrown around in these discussions. I know I certainly have. It’s a fairly basic statement that, on paper, is true. Your AEWC is only useful to you when it’s actually in the air. That’s true for literally any aircraft.

It is true. An aircraft with air refueling will be able to extend its endurance and in turn increase the amount of time it’s allowed to stay on station. This will always be to the benefit of larger aircraft like the E-7, because despite what one might think, it isn’t actually the endurance that gets you at this stage.

When we discuss this topic, you often see a focus on the range and endurance combo. That, though, is the wrong way to visualize this, and I can actually use another platform that suffers this same problem to compare: submarines.

That might sound a bit strange at first, but hear me out. At a certain point, your endurance is no longer the limiting factor involved. It’s people. Similar to a submarine, it isn’t going to be fuel that you run out of. It’ll be stores, black water, and people able to operate in an efficient manner.

When you introduce that air refueling factor into the equation, that priority changes. Similar to how modern submarines, especially when we discuss modern Li-Ion battery systems, aren’t so much limited by their endurance but by the stores they have available.

To that degree, a larger aircraft will always benefit, or more so the aircraft with more space for stores and a larger rest area, which can not only be used to support the base amount of operators but also carry additional personnel to swap out. If you look at any AEWC aircraft, you’ll take note of that rest area. It’s there for a reason.

This also highlights one of the differences between us and many other Global operators that sets us apart: distance. While many of our European allies have the benefit of short distances among an interconnected continent, Canada faces no such luxury.

Pick a location, whatever you want: Trenton, Winnipeg, Cold Lake, Edmonton, North Bay. Then compare it to the distance it takes to reach Inuvik and Iqaluit, right up into the reaches of the Archipelago. Let’s use Inuvik as an example, and use Cold Lake, Edmonton, and Winnipeg as examples. How far is that distance?

Edmonton? ~1,950 km.

Cold Lake? ~2,050 km.

Winnipeg? About 2,300 km.

So ~2,000 km for any of them, give or take a few hundred kilometers. With that number and the endurance figures, we can actually get a rough idea of what the on-station time would be, excluding air refueling.

Let’s take the big two options, the GlobalEye and Wedgetail. While Saab advertises times above 11 hours of endurance, after talking around we will be using that 11-hour figure. The E-7 advertises a figure of ~10 hours of endurance, although of course its ability to refuel extends that time, which can skew numbers a bit.

For the sake of this calculation, we are going to assume both the E-7 and GlobalEye also maintain very similar cruise speeds to each other (for this, we’re using 850 km/hr). This is the last important number for us today. With that, we can start working on our basic equation. It roughly looks like:

Endurance (On-Station Time) = Total Mission Capability - Round Trip Transit Time

We can calculate that transit time by roughly taking the speed of each aircraft and dividing the total distance. Crude, yes, but for discussions like this, it can work to illustrate the point we are trying to make. We are going from Edmonton to Inuvik, the shortest distance we mentioned. So that’s the 1,950 km distance divided by 850 km.

That gives us a rough math of about 2.3 hours to reach Inuvik, or 4.6 if we include the round trip. Subtracting by the endurance both aircraft state gives us an on-station time of 5.4 hours for the Wedgetail and 6.4 for the GlobalEye.

So in the grand scheme of things, not very much time at all. The truth is that the endurance time between both platforms is minimal. Of course, there are alternative solutions to this, such as some proposals to base in Yellowknife; however, it doesn’t get to that fundamental problem.

There isn’t a lot of infrastructure up North. The ability to even land and refuel is minimal at this time, which brings us to another issue.

Communities Need Supplies Too

Let’s talk about Inuvik here specifically, because the issue applies across the board. Let’s talk specifically about Mike Zubko Airport and its fuel supply. Mike Zubko is the home for everyone. It is the location of FOL Inuvik, as well as the town’s primary airport. It handles everyone, from the RCAF to commercial aircraft, bush pilots, and everyone in between.

There is no other place. It is this one airport. Everyone shares the same infrastructure, same fuel supply. That is the case everywhere in the Arctic. Inuvik is actually one of the lucky ones. They have year-round road access via the Dempster Highway. They still occasionally, though, have fuel supply issues.

Inuvik is lucky here, but this setup is how it is for everyone, and guess what? Those other communities aren’t so lucky. We talked about it already when we talked about the Mackenzie River. The infrastructure in the North is failing. The vital lifelines of barges and ice roads that have sustained the supply chains across the Arctic are slowly degrading, pressed especially by the shifting climate.

You should take some time and look at the articles regarding fuel shortages. There are a lot of them. Here’s one, and another, and here’s one from Iqaluit a few years ago. Many of these communities have no year-round access to fuel shipments. They rely primarily on the yearly sealift for resupply.

Every time you take more, every time you say you can just take extra, is a moment where you take more from the local community that relies on the same supply. You don’t have the luxury of getting more for a large chunk of the year. You don’t have the luxury of dedicated supply. Everyone uses it. Everyone shares that burden.

It isn’t so simple as to land where there might be fuel and take some. It will never be that simple. In some cases, we’re talking about small communities where water is still delivered by truck. These are not communities you can just refuel at.

That is on top of, especially outside the major regional hubs like Inuvik and Iqaluit, the need to ensure the fuel supply is good and not contaminated, an extra logistical burden that oftentimes isn’t discussed. Yet as you saw above, bad fuel is an issue. It isn’t a boogeyman concept.

All of these are solutions I have heard. All of them are ideas I have heard casually tossed around, even by some who should know better. You don’t just refuel, nor does the RCAF want to take those burdens and risks if they can avoid it. Even then, you still need to land and refuel, taking your aircraft out of the air where it needs to be. That goes for AEWC aircraft especially.

Part of the funding for NOSH should include expanding fuel capacity at many FOLs. It is very much needed, and a critical ceiling for the RCAF. However, it doesn’t excuse that for most northern communities you don’t have the benefit of getting more fuel, nor having supplies available.

It would require not just expanding facilities, but major operational planning to ensure that supply was available when needed. It’s for all those reasons that, for the RCAF, removing that equation with aerial refueling presents a massive benefit.

We aren’t Europe. You can’t land at any regional airport you feel like. We also have a massive amount of territory to cover, both in terms of where we have to patrol and the transits from down South to up North. Even going from Edmonton to Inuvik is greater than the distance from London to Warsaw.

Even from Inuvik to Iqaluit, the two FOLs we mention, is a ~2,000 km distance, a bit more I believe. You can shorten that if you focus exclusively on Yellowknife to Inuvik, but that’s one scenario, and many take into account a possible permanent basing in Yellowknife, which isn’t going to happen.

It’s for all of these reasons that I understand why the RCAF wants this, and why they’re willing to fund and support the effort. It makes sense. It’s almost needed unless you’re willing to sacrifice, or invest billions in modern infrastructure to not fix the issue, but mitigate it as much as possible.

It’s a great move. Should have happened years ago. Should have been top of the checklist in my books. I love the Global. I support big fleets of Global aircraft in many variants. I gawk about it every two weeks on average. So I don’t say this to speak down on the family, or its use-case.

I want the Global to succeed. I want it to be in the fleet. I want it to live up to its potential, and this is a way of actually trying to do that. It is the step in the right direction for the family. It also opens up a lot more possibilities, newer possibilities and case studies that aren’t possible without that aerial refueling capability.

I’m no engineer. I can’t speak to feasibility. I can’t speak to how this would work or look like. That is outside my technical ability. I save that to the real folks, the folks with the education and experience to judge the true feasibility of this. I will certainly question around.

However, I do at least wanna see the effort made. If it can’t? Oh well. We tried, we gave it a shot. I care more for that than to raise our arms and cry defeat. That isn’t me, that isn’t us. That is the sort of mentality we have long had that we need to stomp out.

So good on everyone for trying. You have my support at the least.