"C Knowles" wrote in message om...
We've been thinking about it as long as I've been in the business.
Unfortunately getting the funding for even the basics is well-nigh
impossible. Every time something starts to gain momentum it is sacrificed
for something determined to be more important. And if I had a dollar for
every time a general made a pronouncement...

One last input and I will let theis dead horse be buried and
gone...Its been my observation that the Air Force has the shortest
institutional memory of all the services...I'd opine the Marines have
the longest. heck a recent Aviation Week articel all but said that the
AF had essentially forgotten that Firebee drone variants had been used
as armed UCAVs as long ago as Vietnam and as recently as GW I.
Anyway, rumaging about I found this article on the web:

http://www.codeonemagazine.com/archi...3/jana_93.html

Which has the following interesting passage printred below. Mind you
the 767-200 and especially the -400 are not going to be nearly as
"sporty"(I note that for the evasive tactics mentioned below) as the
C-135s they will replace and they have fewer parts to lose before
things get really, really ugly as well. Could well be most of the
folks who "discovered" the dilemma mentioned below are now long gone?:

Most people may think that tankers just fly around in safe areas
during wartime, never getting too close to danger. The Gulf War
disproved this notion. On numerous occasions, tanker crews flew into
the combat zone to rescue aircraft low on fuel. In some cases, tanker
crews braved antiaircraft fire. A flight of two KC-135s led by Maj.
Herb Otten of the 452nd Air Refueling Wing was orbiting in Saudi
Arabia near the Israeli border awaiting a return strike force of F-16s
when an AWACS advised that the F-16s were low on fuel and that one had
sustained serious battle damage. Despite lack of fighter cover, Otten
flew north into Iraqi air space to meet the fighters before they ran
out of fuel. The tankers eventually had to fly almost 100 miles north
into Iraq before they made contact with and successfully refueled the
fighters.

"One of the vital lessons of our experience over there was the
vulnerability of tankers," explains Col. Bill Sherer, the commander of
the 161st Air Refueling Group of the Arizona ANG. Sherer was
coincidentally in Europe on an air refueling mission when Desert
Shield began. He flew one of the first missions of the tanker "air
bridge." Sherer notes that flying close to enemy lines, or sometimes
into enemy territory, opened a lot of eyes. "In years past at
exercises like Red Flag, our tankers would orbit outside the exercise
area and refuel either side's aircraft as necessary," Sherer
continues. "It was like the game King's X: everyone was safe from
attack when refueling. Now we are treated as the high-value assets we
really are. If we get shot down, our side loses its fuel supply, and
probably loses the war. So now when we go on exercises, we practice
evasive maneuvers. We work much closer with our fighter cover when we
have it. Fighter crews have a vital interest in our protection."