Patent ID: 6889941

Claim:
An aircraft formation/refueling guidance system for guiding a follower aircraft relative to a leader aircraft comprising: a datalink onboard the leader aircraft and the follower aircraft for providing a position hold command and a bias command from the leader aircraft to the follower aircraft; an optical tracker onboard the follower aircraft to take an image of the leader aircraft when receiving the hold command from the leader aircraft, to track the leader aircraft using the image of the leader aircraft, and to provide optical tracker movement outputs; a resolver connected to the optical tracker to resolve the optical tracker movement outputs when tracking the leader aircraft to provide resolver control signals; a vernier control for receiving the bias command from the leader aircraft over the datalink to change a position of the follower aircraft by biasing the resolver control signals with a bias signal; a sum circuit connected to the resolver and to the vernier control for receiving the resolver control signals and the bias signal for providing a sum circuit output signal; and an autopilot and autothrottle connected to the sum circuit to receive the sum circuit output signal and connected to the datalink to receive the position hold command to control the follower aircraft.