Before the wretched thing was put out of its misery, some AEW3 planner turned up from Waddo to talk to our squadron war planning team about the offload requirement needed to keep the AEW3 supplied with enough fuel to keep it cool...
He seemed to think that each AEW3 would be allocated its own VC10K3 - of which we had but 4. We pointed out that this was nonsense, because the AEW3 orbit points were a long way from the tanker towlines, which were positioned to meet the AD fighter CAP needs.
I don't recall the offload quantity needed to keep the AEW3 satisfied, but it was huge. When I asked whether the E-3 would need the same, our visitor went rather quiet....
The only real difficulty tanker crews face in supporting fast jets at sea is the risk of the wretched fish heads shooting you down, despite all the identification procedures being carried out correctly. If the Navy's performance on JMCs was anything to go by, there wouldn't be any AAR after about Day 2 of any war. Not that their ships were ever where they were supposed to have been, according to the miles of signals they'd sent!