Air Force Maj. Nicholas Edwards, an intelligence analyst manager with the California Air National Guard’s 195th Airlift Wing, updates leaders from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection on the Carr Fire in Shasta County, Calif., July 30, 2018. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Edward Siguenza
A team from the California Air National Guard‘s 195th Airlift Wing is being used as a reconnaissance and surveillance unit, providing the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection agency with up-to-date intelligence used to battle current wildfires.
“We’re able to provide real-time eyes on in any area where the fire’s at,” said Air Force Maj. Nicholas Edwards, intelligence analyst manager. “We can provide information to where CAL FIRE can direct resources. We give information to the decision makers in a timely manner.”
Working Together
The California Guard team works side by side with CAL FIRE analysts. In about a week the wildfires have affected nearly 90,000 acres, destroying more than 500 homes and buildings and killing at least six people. Thousands of Redding residents have been evacuated.
The Guard’s contributions are “seriously helping us,” said Capt. Robert DeCamp, CAL FIRE intelligence officer. “The knowledge they have and the information they provide are critical for us to fight the fire. They have equipment we don’t have, and that helps us tremendously.”
Air Force Tech. Sgt. Matthew LeMaire, an imagery expert, and Air Force Staff Sgt. Marlon Ramos, an analyst, monitor the fire via an MQ-9 Reaper, a remotely piloted aircraft. The drone employs its wide-range sensors to collect and send precise data.
Providing Information
Twice daily, LeMaire and Ramos gather the drone’s information and provide printouts to CAL FIRE. The information is transcribed onto maps and other information products and are released to firefighters and emergency crews.
This information is used to track the fire’s movements so authorities can position defenses and notify the public if evacuations are necessary.
“This is one fire that’s very unpredictable, but we can track it with the capabilities the Guard provides us,” DeCamp said.
Source: DoD
I have read the above article about the usefulness of drones in supporting with IRS flights the forest fires fighting ansd I believe that the contribution of drones to the work of extinction can not only be of “support” to the extinction but, taking into account the available technologies, also of direct “attack” unloading extinguishing agent on the flames.
I think it is time for the UAS´s innovativeness to offer to the worldwide hardworking and risky fire fighters, terrestrial or aerial, mainly to airmen, a “specific drone” able to extinguish forest fires, primarily at night and make their work safer, easier, cheaper and operationally more efficient.
So I take advantage the opportunity to comment some pioneering point of view of our company about our innovative-patented “specific drone” for extinguishing forests fires at night from the air.
Watching the disastrous fires that are devastating California, Greece and worldwide this summer and the impotence of firefighters to combat them, it is necessary to emphasize that we should assume that we are employing obsolete weapons against every day stronger enemy and we are losing the battle.
Or we integrate modern available technologies to develop the operational capability of discharge more quantity of extinguish agent in less time over de forest fire, be able to make it at night when the fire is weakest, and make it at safer and cheaper way than actual aerial means or our forest will burn away irretrievably, and this capability only can be accomplished developing a specifically designed UAS.
That it is worth operating a LAT (Large Air Tanker) or a VLAT (Very Large Air Tanker) during the day if at night the fire will go on progressing without control. The great lack of aerial forest fire fighting means is the night operation capability and its development is where must concentrate the efforts of the responsible agencies as well as of the operators and aeronautical companies.
The big fires, the destructive ones are those that last one-day, one night and at next morning are out of control, I firmly believe that the priority should be to develop the first night aerial forest fire fighting operational capability and this is the NitroFirex´s main objective.
This operational capability only can be achieved by the development of an innovative “specific” drone like the already patented (US 7,690,438 B2) by Nitrofirex, you can check those links to get a proper idea of our project.
http://www.nitrofirex.com, /// https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTOjTWSHR64&feature=youtu.be.
The Nitrofirex concept operation does not affect air or ground safety nor citizens privacy just because the drone will fly initially, from the helicopter or transport plane, to the release point, at night and inside the segregated area of the forest fire and later on, at very low level (500 feet or below), in a flight programed by non populated area from the fire to the operation´s base of the transport aircraft.
And equipped with a parachute and airbag to ensure a safe soft landing out of programed airfield just in case of any emergency and according with the European “operations risk based” regulation, the Nitrofirex UAS is undoubtedly classified a “Specific” category with no MTOW limitations.
As a confirmation of the viability of the operational concept patented by NitroFirex years ago, you can watch the following comparative video: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5r89j1lc9u3mwkz/VIDEO%20COMPARTIVO-2%20copia.mp4?dl=0. (This video is made with the key sequences of the previous NitroFirex video, published in 2012 and the videos published by Airbus in 2017 (youtu.be/qCL1e1MJtSw) and by DARPA 2015 (www.youtube.com/watch?v=df__CjHECws)).
As you can see AIRBUS, with its Future Air Power program, and DARPA in its Gremlins program, assigned to be developed by Boeing and General Atomics, are both developing the operational concept patented by Nitrofirex but only for military applications.
If the Nitrofirex patent concept can be developed for military porpoises (dropping armament), why can not it be developed for all this very real and very necessary civilian applications as it is night aerial forest fire fighting (dropping extinguish agent) and perform it in a cheaper a safer way than actual aerial means?
The development of “dual technologies” that can be used interchangeably for military and civilian applications is a reality in today’s world.
Therefore, considering the technological power that those companies/agency represents, it is difficult to justify within the society, the media and the decision makers that the idea patented by Nitrofirex years ago for civil applications only its development for strictly military purposes is projected.
Finally I would like to make some reflections about the technological evolution of the forest fire fighting aerial means during the last decades.
In my opinion the debate should not be whether LAT or VLAT, plane or helicopter, scooper or ground plane, direct or indirect water drops, the debate should be whether, in the middle of the 21st century, we are using the appropriate technological means to properly forest fire fighting from the air or not.
Almost fifty years ago man went to the moon, for more than six years the unmanned vehicle Curiosity has been driving around on Mars surface, but here on heart our forest still burnt away at night only because we have not been able to integrate already existing technologies
If we compare it to all other sectors of aviation where the innovations have been really significant during the last seventy years, paradoxically in the sector of aerial fire fighting no modern aeronautic technologies have been implemented up to now.
We are using techniques, and procedures developed more than 70 years ago in a very risky only daytime operation and every day it is clearer that these methods are insufficient to combat the devastating fires that, due to climate change, are devastating the worldwide forests.
With the support of the European Space Agency we are finishing a small concept demonstrator able to drop in flight several dozen of liters and our next step is to develop a pre-commercial demonstrator in the range of several hundred or even thousand liters of dropping capacity but we need further technological and economic support to accomplish our following stage.
Of course we know that our approach is ambitious, but we also know that every day is more necessary and technically available and for that we need political, economic, business, academic and media support on both sides of the Atlantic to get our objectives.
Although we fight with different weapons and different levels, we fight on the same side against the same enemy, for that reason I believe that we must combine efforts and synergies in order to achieve the night aerial forests fire-fighting capability a soon as possible.
I feel the length of this comment but I did not want to leave any aspect untouched.
Luis M. Bordallo
Nitrofirex
President
Excellent to see our National Guard doing all they can to help in this dire situation. We need more MAFFS 2 systems and 130’s to carry them. CA just got 7 C130H’s from USFS but they are not enough. These came from the coast guard and are being converted to full time tankers, not just MAFFS birds. They will be dedicated tankers. I do agree with the previous poster, Luis from Nitrofirex, we need a solid, dependable night attack platform, and UAS MAY be the answer.
The concept of dropping their units from an LCA like ac-130 adds more flight time to the already hammered schedule of the 130’s in fire fighting. I also am not sure the amount of water and retardant dropped by something that small (4 across in a C-130 is pretty small) would be effective even in a night time spot fire knockdown situation. They seem to suggest a payload of a dozen or more of them in each C-130. How much weight does the airframe add to the payload the 130 has to haul? And each unit is going to have to self stabilize and deploy its wings and guidance fins and stabilize after being thrown out the back of a Large Cargo Aircraft in flight.
This would be an very challenging project, and would only work if there was a recovery field within the limited distance they could fly on battery after delivering the retardant. The animation shown on the website shows 4 aircraft flying in formation and deploying the retardant or extinguishing agent, while this looks pretty, flying that close in the dangerously turbulent air of a fire line is a recipe for disaster.
Even with excellent software and sensors maintaining separation, a formation like that using gliders would only hold together as long as the lead was aware of all the others in its formation and adjusted it’s speed and flight to allow the others to catch up. Remember you don’t have a throttle yet to speed up and catch up to lead. That being said, a formation of 4 in train with quarter mile between them would probably work pretty well.
Finally their claim of more retardant per hour frankly would have to be proved and in my opinion “doesn’t hold water”… (sorry could not resist). Why do I doubt it, because each and every one of these micro fire fighters has to be recovered and turned around. Lets say you have 24 in each load in a C-130, and you deploy all of them in a 10 min period over the area of interest. Now you have 24 autonomous drones flying down over the fire then finding their way back to the landing zone. You can’t be landing drones and 130’s on the same patch of ground until all of them have landed or at least confirmed they are not coming home. Then you have to recover, refill, recharge 24 drones, Flight system and preflight check each one, load all 24 into a C-130 and get it back in the air, climb to an altitude that is high enough to launch these and then repeat the process.
A final comment, the illustrated system of a bottom dump hatch array is going to be problematic, and prone to leakage, leakage that is going to end u inside the C-130 airframe, and be whipped up by the airstream and blown all around the cargo area and cabin.
They have a lot of work to get this to the point of even testing it, I wish them the best of luck. No really I do, we need stuff like this if we as a nation, and even as a state expect to survive.