I disagree. This sounds like a reasonable summary. Or perhaps: “[parent]. However, technological improvements have enabled safer nighttime flying, and so Australia is starting to incorporate it.”
I think the future of fires needs to be the following: send the 5000 men when it's only 1000 acres, not 400k acres. So detect fast and respond faster. Or heck 2 acres.
Generally, yes. But this also depends on having the sensing in place to detect and respond to them quickly when they start in very remote locations.
Plus, of course, the whole argument that we actually need to be moving the other direction— toward a larger number of small annual burns rather always putting out so that the forest becomes a tinderbox after decades of never burning.
That sounds like a great goal but isn't very feasible.
1000 acres is ~1.5 square miles
Depending on how well the forest, etc has been maintained, cleared of brush, etc, a fire can move as much as 10-15 miles/hour. At 10mph, it would travel 1.5 miles in 9 minutes. At 15 mph, it's down to 6 minutes.
At least one fire was moving up to 17 miles/hour here in Texas in 2011.
California has recently acquired helicopters capable of doing night fire missions.[1] But jets seem to be too dangerous. From article: "Larry Groff of Windsor and another pilot, Lars Stratte of Redding, were killed when their CAL FIRE air tankers collided over a fire near Hopland in 2001."
Spotter planes, tankers, and more spotter planes flying NOE have to maintain visual air sep while also not CFITing. It's dangerous AF to run daytime ops at night because YCSS even with NVGs.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 49.0 ms ] thread[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_vision_system
[2] https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/aviation/flight-decks-display...
Plus, of course, the whole argument that we actually need to be moving the other direction— toward a larger number of small annual burns rather always putting out so that the forest becomes a tinderbox after decades of never burning.
1000 acres is ~1.5 square miles
Depending on how well the forest, etc has been maintained, cleared of brush, etc, a fire can move as much as 10-15 miles/hour. At 10mph, it would travel 1.5 miles in 9 minutes. At 15 mph, it's down to 6 minutes.
At least one fire was moving up to 17 miles/hour here in Texas in 2011.
[1] https://www.firehouse.com/operations-training/wildland/news/...
OTOH, I'd be very happy for YOU to have a go at it.