I am amazed how they can refuel helicopters.
Google image search “Operation Black Buck infographic”. The had a fleet of tankers to refuel a smaller fleet of tankers, to refuel a single tanker that refueled one bomber to fuck up the runway as the Argentinian airbase.
Not much, fuel is pretty heavy at ~7 pounds/gallon, it’s mostly hidden belowdecks where the civilian version would put the passengers’ luggage.
Either F-18s or F-15s, the former of which have a well-protected mobile airport to go back to.
Well, jet fuel is just fancy Kerosene…
They fly B-52s from Barksdale (NW Louisiana) to the middle east and back whenever there’s a dust-up, iirc they broke the Black Buck record more than once in '91 and/or '03. Because the ones at Diego Garcia are needed for nuclear deterrent.
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I am amazed how they can refuel helicopters.
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I would be interested to learn any stats about refueling like how many refueling airplanes have we had in the air at one time, or the longest amount of time we’ve had a major refueling program and how many planes were involved.
The opening night of Operation Desert Storm was the largest number of tankers airborne at once. Over 300 US tankers were in-theater at several bases in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Egypt, and Turkey.
The longest time is now - the US has had a continuous, significant tanker presence in the ME since Desert Shield/Desert Storm, supporting Northern Watch, Southern Watch, OEF/OIF, and other operations. That presence has grown and shrunk over the decades as tensions in the region rise and fall, but it’s been continuous since 1990. Sorry, not providing numbers or locations on a current operation.
The unclassified ballpark figure (sort of like how anything you read about fighter jets or warships just says “faster than [high number, but actually a good bit lower than the classified reality]” for top speed) is “many” and “a bit back from wherever somebody’s day is about to get/just got ruined.” 
Jets can run for hundreds of hours between teardowns so it’s not that much more maintenance, the USAF has a basically unlimited fuel budget for forward-based tankers, there’s two pilots who can trade off flying and napping, and for the rest of the BUFF crew it’s no less (well, maybe slightly less) comfortable than a cattle-car-class commercial flight, so why NOT fly from Barksdale or Minot to the Middle East and back? The aforementioned OPSEC reasons, and also you need some way to get the crews some flying time (for 23 hours it’s just a routine training mission, aside from the time over target), and might as well break some records and wave America’s big ol’ military dick in everybody’s faces while we’re at it. As a bonus, I wouldn’t be surprised if the crews preferred the 24 on/whatever off schedule and sleeping in their own bed with their SO after every mission to being deployed halfway around the world.
When I was on Okinawa, Kadena AFB had a day where they were showing off various aircraft including a KC-135. My buddy was astonished at all that empty space they were actually letting us walk through. I just told him it would not be able to get off of the ground if the interior was solid fuel.
Another aircraft on display was the SR-71 and it was of extreme interest, as up until then you’d get your film confiscated if you were caught taking a picture. Unlike the other aircraft you could actually walk up to – or even through in the case of the Cs and KCs – the cones were set out at about 20 feet.
The Operation Black Buck infographic is one of many virtuoso pieces by Paul Button, and can be browsed at different scales here.