Guess it's a omen that I need to buy a plane load of watches.

 

Interesting. Who apart from the military does air-to-air refuelling?

 

Huge investment for a limited customer base. Australia actually has five refuellers, so I'd be surprised if we were customers, but it makes sense that air forces around the world that don't have tankers might need these contractors from time to time.

 

It's just a sign of the military trying to cut costs by outsourcing non-core warfighting tasks.

Smart cookies pushing tankers for the USAF see an opportunity with a company in development and it corners a market.

I remember seeing fully loaded (armament/stores) F4s taking off and heading straight for a tanker because they couldn't meet MTOW if they were fully fuelled so it was get airborne, get gassed up and off they went.

Many missions went that way and I suspect they still do so the tankers out of harms way help keep the dollars down.

 

I thought with the downturn of the Swiss Watch Industry, that Omega decided to diversify their portfolio.

 

I only see probe and drogue (the pod under the wing) and no boom, so not USAF or any USAF derivative customers. ROW is all probe and drogue if they have in-flight refueling capability. I can see the US using contractors for training gas, but not for combat gas.