I'm skeptical of that claim. I'm not even sure the Israelis would need refueling assets for this. According to the DoD source in the article, the ALBMs were fired from aircraft over the red sea. That's not far from Israel. Depending on the aircraft used and the exact loadout aerial refueling would probably be unnecessary. If it was necessary, Israel has aerial refueling assets of its own: they were able to conduct a strike campaign against Iran, which is much further away, without foreign tanker support.
It just doesn't make sense to me. This seems well within Israel's own capabilities. Why would they even ask another country for support? Just adds diplomatic complexities and increases the risk of the strike getting leaked.
It is my understanding that the UK refuelling system is incompatible with the one the Israelis use. Probe and drogue vs flying boom (or whatever the US/Israeli one is properly called).
That surprises me, I thought all NATO planes were interoperable. Israel isn't part of NATO but their systems are mostly sold by NATO countries. US jets can't use UK tankers?
Each system has its pros and cons, and as a result both methods are widely used. Even the US isn't standardized. The US Air Force I believe largely uses the boom method, while the US Navy largely uses the probe-and-drogue system. Though I believe some aerial tankers are capable of providing fuel via either method.
I think interoperability and modularity as core concepts in military design are "only" a few decades old and as such there's probably plenty of existing systems that haven't needed to be replaced yet, or can't be replaced due to constraint chains that will start fitting into that dogma over time.
It just doesn't make sense to me. This seems well within Israel's own capabilities. Why would they even ask another country for support? Just adds diplomatic complexities and increases the risk of the strike getting leaked.