Sorry but honestly: Why would they want to do that?
That the US with their imperial implications of ‘pax americana’ needs long range air force capabilities has at least some internal logic to it. But the question that comes to my mind: If it’s really about defending ones home land… why would you need to refuel mid air? I personally am worried about this trend of rearmament with defensive and offensive capabilities in time of right wing populist nutjobs being installed by the wealthy elites.
/edit: Thanks for the useful replies. Your arguments make sense and seem plausible!
I think its is propably due to the max takeoff weight. Planes are capable of flight with much higher weight than they can take off with. So with air refueling, plane can take massive amount of weapons, while having fuel tanks low enough to take off, and then get the rest of the fuel mid air.
Makes sense, I didn’t know that, thank you.
Apparently to keep jets longer in air, they said jets aren’t working the way you could land them and start again if you need them, they’ll often return errors, go through long checks and require some maintenance before you can use them again. With tankers you can just refuel them and keep on the mission longer without hassle, whwhich makes air force much more expandable and manageable
I didn’t think about that either, thank you!
If the SHTF regarding Poland, the rear of the threat will be somewhere in Siberia, and being able to reach it would be useful.
Yes and no. I get the point and internal logic behind long range air operations against a certain country.
However I currently am doubting if the time for such operations isn’t over in general. As we currently observe in Ukraine it seems much more logic to saturate the enemies air defense with cheap drones and use said drones coupled with long range cruise missiles to strike hostile production capacities.
However I recon this is just my opinion and a country’s military consists of many different actors, some of whom may share similar views while others may disagree—each with good reasons.
