Military ultra-long-range aircraft requirement

Air Force wanted a 25,000-mile-unrefueled aircraft because they anticipated losing all overseas air bases (Philippines, Okinawa, Diego Garcia). Tom's response: the earth's circumference is 25,000 miles, so 12,000 miles is the maximum useful range; he had just flown Dallas-Sydney on an A380 (17 hours, ~12,000 miles) to make the point.

That was one thing they wanted to do. The other thing — they wanted an aircraft that would fly 25,000 miles without refueling. I said, excuse me, the earth is only 25,000 miles in circumference, so you should only need to get to any place in the world with a 12,000-mile flight. The summer before last, I took the longest flight in the world, seventeen hours Dallas to Sydney. Seventeen hours on one airplane, the Airbus A380. It's a long flight, but you can get there — that's about 12,000 miles, and there's never going to be a longer flight than that, because you go a great circle. They said, we figure that in the future we will not have any air bases except in the continental United States. They didn't say it, but the Filipinos are going to kick us out, the Japanese are going to kick us out of Okinawa, we won't be able to use Diego Garcia. So they wanted an aircraft with — well, the requirements for lightweight materials are horrendous. But that's what people will design when they have no constraints. They'll say that's what they'd like to have.

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