If you believe I'm being pessimistic by seeing this as anything other than a very limited-option tool, then yes, I am.
With regard to "devastating fires," one should note that most of the serious fires we've had have been man-made. First line of defense, stop lighting forest fires.
Second, anybody who has ever fought fire, especially wildland fire, comprehends in a way that cannot be explained that a fire can be well beyond anything mankind can field to put it out. Nothing we have, including the "supertankers" are anything more than a drop in the bucket. We don't go direct on fires; we redirect them, light back burns, choke them cut off their fuels.
We allow them to burn into natural barriers. We do a lot of things with fire, but actually putting it out is often out of the question. It's not a sensible or safe way to do it.
A bigger issue is fire prevention. Most of the homes that burned this time around in Southern California shouldn't have burned. Not because aerial assets weren't on scene fast enough, not because there wasn't enough retardant capability. The homes burned because people have been told for 30 years not to let oak grow up underneath their redwood decks, to build defensible spaces around their homes, and to plan for such fires. The homes burned because people are stupid and stubborn, and never seem to think it will happen to them.
High winds drove those fires, typical of many wildland fires. I've chased fires doing drops in winds over 50 knots. If you've ever seen a 300' fire moving at 50 knots, especially from the ground, you'd think you'd met God. You'd think that you'd met him, and that you were the subject of His wrath, The noise, the heat, the speed, the destruction...cannot be described. Putting a few thousand gallons of retardant on that, or water or foam on that will make the smoke change color for a few minutes...if it gets to the fire at all.
You don't stand in front of a semi truck on the road to assert your right as a pedestrian, and you don't get in front of a fire like that, either. Physics.
If you don't like fire, then prevent it.
Fire in many cases is benificial. With respect to loss of life and structures, much of that can be prevented by using some common sense in removing trees, scrub, and creating defensible spaces around structures. Any firefighter who has had to do urban interface defensive firefighting has seen homes side by side; one burns one doesn't; one had defensible space cut around it while the other didn't. Sad, but people just don't listen, no matter how many times they hear it can happen to them.
Fire is benificial to wildlife, to plant life. It kills diseases, removes deadwood, causes seeds to open, sterilizes soil in some cases where the soil is disease ridden.
Environmentalists have severely damaged the logging industry. The logging industry had become very environmentally friendly, planting as much as was harvested, being a vital part of managing forests. With logging removed to protect often non-existant spotted owls (tastes like chicken), bug kills and excessive old growth take over, leading to prime fire conditions.
Log and manage, and the liklihood for the kinds of fires we've been seeing are decreased.
We're seeing significant changes in weather patterns, with attendant changes in long term fuel moistures...leading to more red-flag days when fire behavior is most likely to be high or extreme. We've seen fires in concert with the santa ana winds that have driven them, often in times of high pressure, with smoke laying low, reducing the chance to fly on them. Flying budgets have been curtailed by congress; we're spending money to bomb the living crap out of third world countries that could be spent bombing forests, or providing lunches for schoolchildren...all to make a sagging president look like he knows what he's doing.
Is the answer to put twenty thousand gallons of water on an aging airliner that was never built for tactical missions, fly it four hundred miles to a fire at ten times the cost of existing tankers, to fly high, be incapable of close low level support, in conditions that present considerable risk to the airplane and those on the ground? In my opinion, it has it's place, but it's a limited one.
As for operating with a 30% cushion over stall...Last year I lost count of the number of times during a run into a fire the rotors and wind shears left me below stall speed, and then in excess of flap speed, and back again, ever second or two as I approached the drop. It's not like flying an instrument approach. It's real world, rubber-meets-the-road kind of flying. Serious business. High drops over the tundra are great, but it's not a realistic scenario for the demands of tactical firefighting.
With regard to "devastating fires," one should note that most of the serious fires we've had have been man-made. First line of defense, stop lighting forest fires.
Second, anybody who has ever fought fire, especially wildland fire, comprehends in a way that cannot be explained that a fire can be well beyond anything mankind can field to put it out. Nothing we have, including the "supertankers" are anything more than a drop in the bucket. We don't go direct on fires; we redirect them, light back burns, choke them cut off their fuels.
We allow them to burn into natural barriers. We do a lot of things with fire, but actually putting it out is often out of the question. It's not a sensible or safe way to do it.
A bigger issue is fire prevention. Most of the homes that burned this time around in Southern California shouldn't have burned. Not because aerial assets weren't on scene fast enough, not because there wasn't enough retardant capability. The homes burned because people have been told for 30 years not to let oak grow up underneath their redwood decks, to build defensible spaces around their homes, and to plan for such fires. The homes burned because people are stupid and stubborn, and never seem to think it will happen to them.
High winds drove those fires, typical of many wildland fires. I've chased fires doing drops in winds over 50 knots. If you've ever seen a 300' fire moving at 50 knots, especially from the ground, you'd think you'd met God. You'd think that you'd met him, and that you were the subject of His wrath, The noise, the heat, the speed, the destruction...cannot be described. Putting a few thousand gallons of retardant on that, or water or foam on that will make the smoke change color for a few minutes...if it gets to the fire at all.
You don't stand in front of a semi truck on the road to assert your right as a pedestrian, and you don't get in front of a fire like that, either. Physics.
If you don't like fire, then prevent it.
Fire in many cases is benificial. With respect to loss of life and structures, much of that can be prevented by using some common sense in removing trees, scrub, and creating defensible spaces around structures. Any firefighter who has had to do urban interface defensive firefighting has seen homes side by side; one burns one doesn't; one had defensible space cut around it while the other didn't. Sad, but people just don't listen, no matter how many times they hear it can happen to them.
Fire is benificial to wildlife, to plant life. It kills diseases, removes deadwood, causes seeds to open, sterilizes soil in some cases where the soil is disease ridden.
Environmentalists have severely damaged the logging industry. The logging industry had become very environmentally friendly, planting as much as was harvested, being a vital part of managing forests. With logging removed to protect often non-existant spotted owls (tastes like chicken), bug kills and excessive old growth take over, leading to prime fire conditions.
Log and manage, and the liklihood for the kinds of fires we've been seeing are decreased.
We're seeing significant changes in weather patterns, with attendant changes in long term fuel moistures...leading to more red-flag days when fire behavior is most likely to be high or extreme. We've seen fires in concert with the santa ana winds that have driven them, often in times of high pressure, with smoke laying low, reducing the chance to fly on them. Flying budgets have been curtailed by congress; we're spending money to bomb the living crap out of third world countries that could be spent bombing forests, or providing lunches for schoolchildren...all to make a sagging president look like he knows what he's doing.
Is the answer to put twenty thousand gallons of water on an aging airliner that was never built for tactical missions, fly it four hundred miles to a fire at ten times the cost of existing tankers, to fly high, be incapable of close low level support, in conditions that present considerable risk to the airplane and those on the ground? In my opinion, it has it's place, but it's a limited one.
As for operating with a 30% cushion over stall...Last year I lost count of the number of times during a run into a fire the rotors and wind shears left me below stall speed, and then in excess of flap speed, and back again, ever second or two as I approached the drop. It's not like flying an instrument approach. It's real world, rubber-meets-the-road kind of flying. Serious business. High drops over the tundra are great, but it's not a realistic scenario for the demands of tactical firefighting.
