Scientists in China have demonstrated a wireless power transmission system that uses a ground-based microwave emitter to beam energy to an antenna array mounted on the aircraft’s underside. Importantly, they were able to do this while both the drone and charging system were in motion.
In tests, the car-mounted system kept fixed-wing drones in the air for up to 3.1 hours at an altitude of 15 metres (49 feet). The key challenge that the team overcame was maintaining alignment between the emitter and the drone during flight, wrote Song Liwei, the project’s leader.
Many comments are about how impractical/useless is this technology TODAY considering easier alternatives… but I see research exploring recharging electric flight devices in flight, which sounds as cool as powerful to have flight devices with larger services and ranges
I think the biggest problem is that this way you have a beacon to your flying device and your recharging station, it would not be that difficult to build a bomb/missile that follow the trace to the ground station
I think that the “recharging” will always be a vulnerable stage and that the objective is to do that puntually and not a continuous dependence on power supply, but still seems safer and easier to abort than the one done currently with non electric planes, and for defense patrolling you will have more important infrastructures that would be targeted first, I still see only advantages if mature enough