Fire Threat Up As Vintage Air Arsenal Shrinks

Having worked for the USFS and CalFire, I can only say that the USFS has had it's head up it's aerial behind forever. CalFire has a fleet of turbo S-2s that are great for the assignment, but I think they should be looking to modernize to the S-3 eventually.

There is an answer that would greatly help. However, lobbyist and politicians got it stopped to protect small aircraft operations, under the guise that a 747 cannot be flown safely near the ground or in the mountains. They should see what a C-141 or C-17 can do in bad weather operation in low level penetration flying through the Rockies. The 747 has even better performance margins than these two aircraft. I know the Evergreen 747 tanker would have been a great help in Colorado this year.

http://www.evergreenaviation.com/supertanker/pdf/summary.pdf
http://www.evergreenaviation.com/supertanker/index.html
http://youtu.be/uUEqbLVfpGc

A team approach with large and small aircraft could be a great advantage.