A MAFFS (Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System) equipped C-130E makes a fire retardant drop on the Simi Fire in Southern California in 2003. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Senior Master Sgt Dennis W. Goff)
Where are the air tankers?
For many fighting some of the hottest wildfires over the past few years, air tankers are slow in coming if they ever come at all.
A July 12 report by The Associated Press, using records from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, said that Arizona fire officials requested support from six air tankers from the Western air fleet on June 30 to battle the fast-exploding Yarnell Hill fire — which killed 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hot Shots — six tankers that never came to help because of heavy thunderstorms in the area and the dwindling number of tankers in the U.S. fleet.
Whether or not the air drops would have arrived in time to save the hot shot crew is undetermined. Experts say it’s doubtful. But the alarming lack of resources and the need for a revamped national fire aviation strategy is seriously hindering efforts to control and battle blazes that cost more in terms of dollars and lives the longer they burn.
According to statistics from the National Interagency Fire Center, nearly half of the requests for air tanker support in 2012 were marked “UTF”, unable to fill. There were 914 requests for air tankers — which can carry anywhere from 3,000 gallons to 12,000 gallons of retardant depending on the type of aircraft — logged by national fire dispatch centers. Civilian tankers were able to be dispatched for 346 requests and another 63 were handled by their military equivalent, MAFFs, and 67 requests were cancelled. That left 438 requests for air support that never came, or 48 percent.
The U.S. Forest Service has struggled to update its aging fleet, with planes going out of service faster than it can replace them with “next generation” aircraft or retrofitted surplus military aircraft from the Department of Defense. Lack of funding and deferred maintenance has been at the center of the Forest Service’s patchwork efforts to create an effective strategy and use of resources for replacing a fleet of firefighting air tankers, water scoopers and helicopters that have been in service for decades. The Forest Service had 40 large air tankers at its disposal in 2000. Today, it has just 11.
“We’re fighting 21st Century fires with Korean War-era aircraft,” said Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) at a June 4 Senate hearing on the state of wildland fire management policy.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) quipped that the planes were “better placed in museums than in the sky.”
Next Generation Air Tankers
No matter the conditions on the ground or the amount of prodding by lawmakers, updating the fleet — consisting of government-owned and operated aircraft and contracts with private companies — is proving to be a slow, slow process.
The Forest Service announced the next generation aircraft contracting process in June 2012. Contract disputes between the federal government and private companies grounded seven planes from flying in 2012, meaning the Forest Service had to cobble together a fleet during one of the most active and expensive fire seasons in history by using C-130s from the Department of Defense and other tankers on loan from a Canadian/Alaska partnership, according to The Gazette of Colorado Springs.
A DC-10 next generation air tanker, operated by 10 Tanker Air Carrier, makes a drop on the Carpenter fire near Humbolt, Nev., on July 1. (U.S. Forest Service photo)
Eleven months later, five companies — Minden Air Corp. of Minden, Nev., Aero Air LLC of Hillsboro, Ore., and Aero-Flite Inc. of Kingman, Ariz., Coulson Aircrane USA, Inc., of Portland, Ore., and 10 Tanker Air Carrier LLC of Adelanto, Calif. — were awarded five-year contracts totalling more than $158 million to fly turbine-powered aircraft with requirements of carrying at least 3,000 gallons of retardant and flying at least 345 mph fully loaded.
As the 2013 fire season began, the Forest Service was able to use just one of the seven next generation air tankers because the other six planes were not certified for aerial firefighting, which can take up to two months. Each aircraft has to be modified to drop fire retardant, according to Rick Hatton, president of 10 Tanker Air Carrier and the operator of the one plane in service, a DC-10 that has made drops of its 11,500 gallons of slurry on fires in Southern California and New Mexico this year.
These other airplanes aren’t ready. They’re in development. And it’s yet to be shown when they’ll be ready and, if they’re ready, how well they will work.”
— Rick Hatton, 10 Tanker Air Carrier president
Three other next generation planes from Aero-Flite and Coulson Aircrane USA have connections to Canadian aerial firefighting industry, according to Canadian Skies magazine. Aero-Flite contracted with British Columbia-based Conair Aviation for two former Lufthansa CityLine Avro RJ85 passenger jets, which is being modified and tested now. Coulson Aircrane USA, a subsidiary of a B.C.-based Coulson Aircrane Ltd., is modifying a Lockheed C-130Q in San Bernardino — a plane that was once an electronic communications relay for the President and also flown by NASA.
Flight tests were to happen in July, then drop tests performed in order to receive USFS Interagency Air Tanker Board (IAB) certification. By then, more than 2 million acres will have been scorched by wildfires in the U.S. so far this year.
The Forest Service plans to contract — depending on funding — for between 10 to 20 more civilian air tankers in the coming years, but there have been no additional bid solicitations posted.
The C27J Spartan
The U.S. Senate passed the Wildfire Suppression Aircraft Transfer Act in December, authorizing the Department of Defense to provide 14 retired C27J Spartan cargo aircraft to the Forest Service to be modified for firefighting. Twenty one of the C27J Spartans were purchased at a cost of $1.6 billion and used in Afghanistan in 2011 for resupplying Army units.
Amid budget cuts, the Air Force deemed the C27J a “luxury”, citing the $9,000-per-hour cost to fly the aircraft, instead favoring the C-130.
Lawmakers are strongly suggesting the Forest Service modernize retired C27J Spartans from the Department of Defense for aerial firefighting (U.S. Air Force photo)
The Forest Service would use the C27J Spartans to supplement its current fleet for drops of fire retardant, delivery of smokejumpers, cargo delivery and fire crew transport. But these aircraft have yet to be transferred, because the Department of Defense has yet to issue a determination of the planes as surplus, despite the Air Force’s contention. As of now, the Italian-made turboprops are being prepared for bone yard parking.
“We need those C27Js at our disposal,” Udall told U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell during the June hearing. “We’ve got to get this done. You know that fires don’t wait for contracts to be signed.”
The outspoken Udall has said that the C27Js can be updated for use by the Forest Service at no cost to the taxpayer, but critics have railed over the past six weeks at Udall’s plan.
“What Congress fails to understand is that there is no existing, off-shelf, permanently mounted, or roll on/roll off tanking system available for those aircraft,” said Tom Eversole, executive director of the American Helicopter Services And Aerial Firefighting Association. “The engineering, design, installation, and certification would have to be totally customized, and would take at least 2½ to three years to accomplish. It could be at least 2016, or possibly 2017, before these aircraft are ready for aerial firefighting — if they were acquired today.”
The roll on/roll off system and tanks that transform a C-130 into an aerial firefighting plane. (U.S. Forest Service photo)
Additionally, questions have been raised about costly parts and maintenance support by Alenia Aeronautica, the C27J’s Italian manufacturer, and the fact that the current Modular Airborne Firefighting System (MAFFS), a self-contained roll on/roll off unit that converts C-130s into air tankers, will not fit the C27J, meaning an additional $10 million to $15 million (plus $2 million per tank).
Private aircraft companies are arguing the technology they’re already developing for their air tankers is cheaper and more readily available than the C27J solution.
The Forest Service wants to have more of its fleet government-owned but contractor-operated. Tidwell noted that when the government contracts to companies for the use of aircraft it does not own, “We’ve had to shut down some of these aircraft because of safety concerns and other things happen when a contractor decides to no longer fly during the middle of the season.
“So ideally, if we could have some government-owned, contractor-operated, then contractor-owned, contractor-operated aircraft, I think that provides us the best mix of large air tankers. It gives us that certainty that even under the most difficult situations we’re going to have some aircraft to fly.”
Some studies say the C27J could cost as much as five times current Forest Service estimates for maintenance and operation, including finding and training agency or contracted pilots to fly the plane.
Bottom line, the C27J Spartans look anything like a certainty, and if so, no time soon.
Air Tankers and the Granite Mountain Hot Shots
The AP report quotes Don Smurthwaite of the National Interagency Fire Center as saying the request for six large air tankers as “coincidental and not consequential” to the situation the Granite Mountain Hot Shots found themselves in during the Yarnell Hill fire that fateful day. The requests do not mention firefighters in peril.
Air drops were performed by Lockheed P2V tankers (operated by Neptune Aviation Services out of Missoula, Mont.) between 12:30 and 1 p.m. today day, according to the AP. But the report has been criticized as inaccurate by some witnesses and firefighters on the ground that day. Comments on the wildfiretoday.com site say that DC-10s out of Mesa, Ariz., and SEATs (single-engine air tankers) were actively working drops on the fire — with the exception of a period of time when thunderstorms were in the area.
Jim Paxon, spokesman for the Arizona Division of Forestry, told the AP:
When that fire blew up with the [thunderstorm] outflow there was no way to get any aircraft in close to the fire. Beyond the heat and turbulence there’s just really unstable air. They tell these big commercial airliners to fly around thunderstorms — well, this activity’s more than a thunderstorm, the activity on a fire when you get one of these big outflow events with 40 or 50 miles an hour winds.”
Still, it cannot be denied that insufficient resources and a cohesive aerial firefighting strategy are hurting federal, state and local ability to effectively deal with the explosive growth of wildfires in the U.S. — a point hammered home to the Forest Service’s Tidwell by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) during the June hearing.
“We’ve seen numerous studies, plans or reports over the years,” Murkowski said. “Another GAO investigation is under way right now, but we still don’t seem to have a real clear picture here on what a safe, efficient, effective and sustainable national aviation program should look like.”