Opinion: Use retired military planes to fight forest fires more effectively

Regarding the June 13 GovBeat excerpt, “U.S. shifts its approach to fighting wildfires” [news]:

Nearly every day on the television, I see forest fires raging in the West and Southwest. Each report tells us that only a fraction of the fires are under control at the height of the inferno.

Occasionally a plane drops fire retardant for about 10 seconds and then departs. Several minutes later, a helicopter does the same. The pattern seems to be repeated with these scattered and infrequent appearances as the conflagration rages.

After serving four years in the Air Force, I took a trip to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska to see leftover aircraft from World War II and recently retired planes decommissioned from service. There were hundreds, possibly thousands of them, apparently still capable of flight.

Is there a shortage of fire retardant, enough to blanket a regional forest fire? We should re-commission and refit retired military and commercial aircraft with enough space to accommodate and drop tons of retardant to stop these fires in their tracks. 

James D. Cook, Schaumburg, Ill. 

Source:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions