It's my understanding that for B2 missions the SOP is to fly from their base in the midwest US, get refueled several times on the way, perhaps drop some precision guided bombs on something on the other side of the planet, and fly home. There's a crew rest bunk where one of the two pilots can sleep on the way, in rotating shifts.
If you're interested, or are like me and just love visualizations of massive military ops, check out this from The Operations Room. Gets at the scale of Operation Black Buck and the massive complexity and coordination of getting those aircraft to their destination (and back).
That whole channel is amazing. Check out the Desert Storm series if you need to burn an hour or two on the weekend refreshing yourself on the history of modern warfare.
Just for clarity because the title is a bit muddy:
This is the first time an unmanned drone has refueled a manned aircraft.
Specifically, a prototype of the Navy's future unmanned carrier based tanker drone transferred a small amount of fuel to a 2 seat F-18 super hornet. They used a 'probe and drogue' or 'basket' style refueling where the receiving jet initiates contact.
The Navy demonstrated the reverse capability...unmanned drone receiving fuel from a manned tanker aircraft...in 2015.
Prior to that, in 2012, DARPA’s Autonomous High-Altitude Refueling program demonstrated fully autonomous aerial refueling of unmanned air vehicles at high altitude. This culminated with two modified RQ-4 Global Hawkdrones flying in close formation to test probe-and-drogue contacts, as seen in this video:
US air forces seems genuinely and deeply challenged by the vast distances of the Pacific, aggravated by the long ranges of Chinese missiles. Many (most?) current American workhorse aircraft were not designed for such distances. This robo-refueling method could really be a game-changer (and sorry for the tired cliché). Not to mention, it can help with the perennial shortage of tanker aircraft. Now if they could do the same for all aspects of theater logistics. Robo-resupply everywhere.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 45.2 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck#/media/Fi...
Reading the article it seems the pilot's personal 33-hour record was actually in a B-52. Here's an article that says the longest combat mission for a B-2 was over 44 hours: https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/the-stealth-bo...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5yAtuYPHK4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxRgfBXn6Mg
This is the first time an unmanned drone has refueled a manned aircraft.
Specifically, a prototype of the Navy's future unmanned carrier based tanker drone transferred a small amount of fuel to a 2 seat F-18 super hornet. They used a 'probe and drogue' or 'basket' style refueling where the receiving jet initiates contact.
The Navy demonstrated the reverse capability...unmanned drone receiving fuel from a manned tanker aircraft...in 2015.
more details and history: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40955/the-navys-tanker...
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40955/the-navys-tanker...