Best thing I think you could do is to visit a tanker base and talk to the crews. Seems to be a fair amount of Neptune planes in SoCal at the moment. Or give them a call and stop by Missoula office. Can't imagine they wouldn't shoot straight when telling you what to expect. They want pilots who will stick around and get a return on their training investment.
Otherwise, the info in the previous 7ish posts are still accurate. The BAE guys I worked with earlier in the season indicated they were working towards more pilots, but you can't just create a tanker captain overnight. A few guys retiring or whatever makes a big dent in capability.