If fighters were intercepting a wayward airliner, there’d be two fighters. If you saw more than two, it was 99+% certainly a refueling operation.
The typical fighter deployment has the fighters launch from their base with as many external fuel tanks as they can carry & all full of fuel. They head towards their destination & are met up by a tanker or tankers someplace down range. Anywhere from 100 to 1000 miles depending on who’s going where. Then they stick together for the rest of the flight to the destination.
Enroute, the fighters will refuel not quite continuously, but close. The idea is to keep each fighter as close to full tanks as possible so that if a problem occurs they have the max range to reach a landing field. Over the US that’s not such a worry. Over northern Canada or the middle of the Atlantic it’s more of a concern. Pilots really *hate *swimming.
If the drag is far enough, they can even suck the tanker “dry” where they tanker has no more fuel to give & still recover itself to a base. If so, a fresh tanker(s) will be launched from a downstream base & meets them in midair. The fighters will leave the original tanker & join the new one for the rest of the trip. As you might imagine, all this takes a wee bit of prior planning to work smoothly.
In high altitude cruise & at leisurely cruise speeds, modern fighters have decent range. So you can self-deploy a decent distance, say more than halfway across the US.
OTOH … Combat & high-speed low-altitude flight is a whole 'nother world of fuel consumption.
Combat ops typically limit the amount of external fuel tanks you can carry because those attachment points are needed for weapons. Plus external tanks reduce manueverability, top speed & increase fuel consumption rates. So you’re much more range limited.
A typical combat profile is to launch with a full load of weapons & jamming pod, plus full internal fuel & maybe some external tanks. Tankers are waiting as close to the battle area as is safe for them. The enemy not having an air force (any more) certainly makes that easier.
So you hit the tanker, top off, then head into battle. Then do your thing to the bad guys, consuming a lot of fuel in the process. Then head out to safety & hit the tanker on the way home to take on enough gas to be able to make it home. Lather rinse repeat.
Meanwhile, the tanker guys are launching a fresh set of tankers every so often to replace the airborne ones as they get sucked dry. And in a big show there might be 5 or 10 or 20 sets of these tanker orbits & fighter streams coming & going. It can make JFK on a Friday night seem pretty tranquil.
Your tax dollars hard at work turning dinosaurs into noise & smoke. 