Sometimes the simplest solution will work wonders, such as tossing boxes of water balloons off the back of a cargo plane. There's a lot more military cargo craft than specialized fire fighting planes. This will be an excellent capacity for some of the Western State Air National guards to fight their summer forest fires as well.
Boeing's Phantom Works lab in Long Beach, California - better known for technologically ambitious military projects like the X-51 hypersonic aircraft and ultra-high altitude hydrogen-powered drone - is onto an idea that's an altogether much lower tech: bombing wildfires with giant water balloons.
Airtankers, the planes typically used to fight wildfires, are dedicated to the task. As their name suggests, they contain massive water (or fire retardant) tanks that are loaded at airports or, if it's a seaplane, they can land on the ocean and suck up seawater. But their specialist role makes them a rarity: the US Forest Service has only 11 such planes on permanent standby, with a further eight military and two civilian ones on call.
Boeing and forestry management firm Weyerhaeuser worked together to come up with a way to turn any cargo plane into a firefighter.
In their scheme, cube-shaped cardboard boxes - about a metre on a side - contain biodegradeable plastic bags that can be filled with water or fire retardant. The boxes are loaded onto a plane, and then dropped from the rear ramp of a regular military cargo plane like the C-130 (of which thousands have been built) or C-17. Rushing air tears the lid from the box and straps attached to the lid rupture the bag, sending more than 900 litres of water cascading down on top of the blaze.
Tests of the Precision Container Aerial Delivery System (PCADS) are ongoing. In addition to radically increasing the number of aircraft available for fighting fires, Boeing hopes to make the practice more accurate. The boxes can be dropped from higher altitudes than airtankers fly, and the balloons burst open much lower, preventing much of the water being cast to the wind.
http://www.newscientist.com
Boeing's Phantom Works lab in Long Beach, California - better known for technologically ambitious military projects like the X-51 hypersonic aircraft and ultra-high altitude hydrogen-powered drone - is onto an idea that's an altogether much lower tech: bombing wildfires with giant water balloons.
Airtankers, the planes typically used to fight wildfires, are dedicated to the task. As their name suggests, they contain massive water (or fire retardant) tanks that are loaded at airports or, if it's a seaplane, they can land on the ocean and suck up seawater. But their specialist role makes them a rarity: the US Forest Service has only 11 such planes on permanent standby, with a further eight military and two civilian ones on call.
Boeing and forestry management firm Weyerhaeuser worked together to come up with a way to turn any cargo plane into a firefighter.
In their scheme, cube-shaped cardboard boxes - about a metre on a side - contain biodegradeable plastic bags that can be filled with water or fire retardant. The boxes are loaded onto a plane, and then dropped from the rear ramp of a regular military cargo plane like the C-130 (of which thousands have been built) or C-17. Rushing air tears the lid from the box and straps attached to the lid rupture the bag, sending more than 900 litres of water cascading down on top of the blaze.
Tests of the Precision Container Aerial Delivery System (PCADS) are ongoing. In addition to radically increasing the number of aircraft available for fighting fires, Boeing hopes to make the practice more accurate. The boxes can be dropped from higher altitudes than airtankers fly, and the balloons burst open much lower, preventing much of the water being cast to the wind.
http://www.newscientist.com
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