The U. S. Forest Service has missed another deadline to produce a report about how to deal with the severe shortage of large air tankers.
A strategy to replace the dozens of air tankers that were permanently grounded after two very old military surplus air tankers fell apart in mid-air in 2002 should have been developed no later than 2004.
Since then, multiple completed reports, and missing promised reports, combined with analysis paralysis have resulted in the large air tanker fleet being reduced to 11 on July 29, compared to 44 in 2002.
The USFS keeps saying that they have plenty of large air tankers, but in the last couple of weeks they brought on additional air tankers, including three Convair 580s and three CL-215 scooper air tankers, bringing the total to 17 medium and large air tankers on exclusive use contracts.
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