It's a massive tactical and strategic advantage to not be tied to fleet oilers in the near future. The 4 to 6 hours a CV/CVN has to plod along at 15 knts beside a tanker taking on fuel for its aircraft, sometimes as often as every day (In the first Gulf War the CV's were usually having to tank every day, the CVN every 2nd). This alone is the major advantage that would be gained from this technology. I think I posted this here a couple of months ago, I'll have to search it, as the articles in the links were excellent. It was in the Navy rail gun thread Marine started I believe about a month ago, and the article describing the advantages for not having to need dedicated fuel/oiler tanker ships was from Breaking Defense Weekly, but I can't find the link now.
Anyhow, not needing to plod along at a slow pace in a straight line for 1/4 of the day during wartime flight ops will make a CVN a much more difficult and elusive target, especially for submarines, and with the huge upswing in potential threat smaller subs out there right now, this is a major piece of news, should the technology eventually work. The savings in $ and access to constant fuel supplies for aircraft and ships that aren't nuclear powered is just incidental really. It's the greater flexibility and safety so far as the movement required for refueling that is the really positive thing for the Navy. Even just running constant regular air operations the CVN in today's world has to tank pretty often, and again, during wartime ops, this tempo increases drastically - this technology will increase the safety and survivability of Western world CV operations by a huge factor.
