The pole in question is a refueling probe that enables the helicopter to top off its fuel from a tanker without landing. Read more: 10 Of The Strangest Military Helicopters Ever Made.

During tests in 2013, the Calspan Learjet 25 fitted with a refueling probe and with X-47B's avionics, autonomously connected with a KC-707 tanker as if it were refueling operationally.

Alternatively, probe-drogue refueling (PDR) involves coupling a probe on a receiver aircraft with a probe receptacle (drogue) attached to a flexible, fuel hose from the tanker aircraft. PDR requires ...

DARPA), in a joint effort with NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, performed the first-ever autonomous probe-and-drogue airborne refueling operation on August 30, ...

F-35B tail number "BF-17" flew over Edwards AFB recently on a series of trials aimed at testing a new white refueling probe light. The dusk timing, desert locale and the F-35’s metallic skin ...

The Navy wanted a better way to test fighter jets’ aerial refueling components, because old setups didn’t accurately simulate the impact between a jet’s probe and the refueling drogue. So ...

Booms can pump gas faster, at around 6,000 pounds per minute, while a probe and drogue pumps at less than half that rate. (The most common American tanker, the KC-135 , can hold up to 200,000 ...

The Global Hawks, huge drones with 131-foot wingspans used for high-altitude surveillance, flew in formation with less than 100 feet separating the refueling "probe" on one and refueling "receiver ...

The Aerial Refueling Certification Agency, located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, has approved a redesigned refueling probe light on F-35 B and C models, a decision that will soon clear ...

The first U.S. military helicopter to participate in air-to-air refueling was the HH-3E, which underwent its first operational test in Southeast Asia with a modified C-130 Hercules in 1967.