...All the measures that would allow CBARS to become a bomber, however, would make it less efficient or more expensive as a tanker. That’s why former Navy Undersecretary Bob Martinage, now at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, was less optimistic. “Yes, in theory, a CBARS could be built that could evolve into a penetrating surveillance-strike platform,” Martinage wrote me in an email. “To do so, however, the shape of the tanker (i.e., outer mold line) and propulsion path would need to be more or less the same as the penetrator, [which] would mean sub-optimizing it for the ‘tanker’ mission. As far as I’m aware, however, this is not what the Navy is proposing to do.”...
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