Thank you gentlemen
As wide as the hystorical cultural gap - when Italian people had boasted by the pearlbuttons on the jackets at XV century, the Russian people, even most rich, were not knowing what the button is - the recent difference in aerial refueling practice between Western air assets and Soviet block was sometimes shocking. The scaring - for some unexplainable reason - MiG-29 initially had no aerial refueling capability and very small amount of internal fuel, so that its definition was creepping from "air defence fighter" to jockingly "its airbase defence fighter", while the only carrier-borne aircraft of Soviet Navy, a light VSTOL attacker Yak-38 had only 60 nm of battle radius with full fuel and two 23-mm gun pods even by using of short takeoff instead of vertical - and no air refueling, of course. For long time the complicated and dangerous wing-to-wing refueling was available only to big airplanes like Badger, Bear and so on. That is why this matter is so interesting for me.