I would LOVE for you to follow up with his reaction and insight after your next breakfast ....
would that be possible?
Done - probably by Friday.
Nothing earth shattering or gems of wisdom that would have overcome the situation.
The United pilot flew DC-10's from West coast to Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. He retired right on the cusp of GPS adoption by most airlines but United at the time did not want to make navigation dependent on an "outside" entity and stuck with an on-board Inertial Navigation system. His reaction was same as mine - except for the presence of the Tankers, we could have had a situation like the 6 Grumman Avengers disappearing in the Bermuda Triangle in 1947.
The F-4 jock just shook his head and said - "bring batteries"....for your own personal GPS system! The F-4 navigation was handled primarily by a "Tac-AN" (tactical aircraft navigation) radio system transmitted from the carrier. He said there was an on-board navigation computer but it was rarely used because it depended on too much input from pilot - such as estimated winds aloft and time on a given course. Essentially a dead-reckoning computer. The Tac-AN system was good for most of their requirements.
He and I speculated that if the tankers hadn't been there and the F-22's had gone down without a trace - would there have been as assumption of Chinese skullduggery....hey, they shot down a satellite, maybe they vectored the F-22's......you fill in the blanks.
That's about it - nothing earth shattering, but an interesting exercise none-the-less. Cheers....