ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, Ga., Oct. 7 -- The U.S. Air Force Reserve Command issued the following news release:
For years, a student pilot learning to refuel a B-52 Stratofortress would ease the aircraft into position roughly 50 feet behind a tanker's boom, hold it there for 20 or 30 minutes, and call it a flight.
No contact. No fuel transferred.
Lt. Col. Brandon Wolf, a 93rd Bomb Squadron instructor pilot, compares the task to parking a boat at a dock: nothing responds instantly, instead a student must learn to anticipate, not react.
"I'm trying to park a half-million-pound aircraft into a twelve-foot box in the sky," he said. "And every practice run is expensive."
The B-52 burns roughly 3,000 gallons of fuel an hour, more than most aircr...