In the visual-based aerial refueling assistance system, how to separate the refueling drogue from the complex background and do rapid detection of drogue area is an urgent problem. How to detect and locate refueling drogue over a long distance in real-time, a refueling drogue detection and location over a long distance method based on Hough-LS was presented. First, did pre-detection on refueling drogue based on Fast Hough Gradient Method (FHGM), and then extracted taper sleeve edge based on the method of Search in eight directions from the center. Finally, realized refueling taper sleeve detection over a long distance by the least squares fitting ellipse. Experimental results show that, the method has good detection effect for long distance (7 to 25 meters) taper sleeve target and it can locate the precise area boundary.