This is an MC-130P "Combat Shadow" Hercules, which is used for clandestine operations, which usually carried out at night. Although this is an air force plane, it has the large pods under the wings to allow "probe and drogue" refuelling of other aircraft - which in this case usually means helicopters. The nose, however, has nothing to do with refuelling, it's more of a testimony to the versatility of this type of aircraft, which entered its fiftieth year of service this year (a fifty year old Hercules, the oldest one still flying, did a firefighting water drop at the Prescott Air Fair a month or so before the Vandenburg airshow).