The earth is on fire. That’s not some Sierra Club hyperbole, but a factual assessment of where we are as a planet. Your editor has woken (for three days now) coughing and inhaling the smoke and ashes from a small-potatoes, 300-acre forest fire 15 miles away. The rest of Oregon is suffering far more. Throughout America and the world, forests, brush lands, prairies and savannahs are being ravaged at record levels.
The National Interagency fire Center illuminates the alarming numbers. “As of this morning (August 14), 75 large active wildfires are being managed with full suppression strategies nationwide. Current wildfires have burned 2,337,468 acres. More than 26,000 wildland firefighters and support personnel are assigned to wildfires, including 21 complex and 5 Type 1 incident management teams, 578 crews, 1,357 engines, 152 helicopters, and six Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems, or MAFFS. Sixty fireline management personnel from Australia and New Zealand are assigned to support large fires in the Northwest Area.” Note the need for international assistance.
Consider the financial outlay required for this current struggle. Each medium-size helicopter typically costs around $4,000 an hour for basic operation, and larger aircraft need even greater resources and larger trained crews. Many of these craft are approaching the ends of their service lives and qualified crews are hard to find. As shown here, attempts have been made to adapt huge water bombers for firefighting missions, with the classic Martin Mars finally being retired with honors. Other craft, such a Lockheed’s Hercules C-130s, are aging and apt to be pulled from service. Newer craft such as the Canadair CL-series are costly to purchase and operate.
Wildfires Pollute More Than Cars and Industry
The organization that underwrites this blog published the following statement in June. “The terrible wildfires that devastated California from 2017 to 2022 destroyed the homes and lives of many who were personally connected with us at the Sustainable Aviation Foundation (SAF) and turned our attention to how advances in autonomous, electrically-powered aircraft could end wildfires. The COVID pandemic interrupted SAF’s annual in-person symposia and afforded it time to deeply research aerial fire-fighting. That research distilled a large body of data on the amount of global burn area and its potential cumulative impact on global CO2 emissions.
Wildfires, fueled by climate change (which is driven by fossil fuel use) outruns the destruction caused by fuel use
The result was SAF’s alarming discovery that wildfires now account for the largest annual increase in atmospheric CO2, amounting to 101 Gigatons of CO2 in 2020 (indexed to the year 2000).”
Several studies bear out this conclusion.
The current situation doubly bad, because the warming, drying earth brings about conditions ready for more wildfires. Even the act of quenching those fires causes the use of massive amounts of fossil fuels, further exacerbating the often tinder-dry situation. An alternate plan becomes necessary.
AAF – a Necessary System
Damon Seeley wrote that, “The Sustainable Aviation Foundation has recently published an introductory article on our work to define a mass-scale aerial firefighting system called AAF (Automated Aerial Firefighting), as well as an FAQ based on stakeholder feedback and a white paper detailing a reference system design.
Based on a design by Dr. Seeley, this AAF singlepod firefighter could be fully automated and not use any fossil fuels in its flight. It would also be quicker and more efficient in quenching flames.
Dr. Seeley has also created a plan for deploying such craft and keeping them supplied during an operation. The system would be mostly automated, relieving the need for large numbers of personnel on scene and providing a level of safety for all.
Less Expensive, More Effective
We need to rethink our methods and mode of attack on what seems to be an ever-growing problem. With well over one million acres ablaze on the West Coast alone, the loss of a single-engine fire-bombing aircraft and an experience pilot, several people killed on the ground, and property losses mounting, we are in the middle of another tragic fire season. Foreign countries worldwide are going through similar disasters. Electric, automated fire fighting could be a possible solution to not only combat the immediate danger, but provide a way to help cool things for the future.