Fire Threat Up as Vintage Air Arsenal Shrinks

[nadinbrzezinski]

BROOMFIELD, Colo. — With a low roar, the 1954-vintage warplane barreled down the runway and heaved itself into the air, wobbling for a moment as its engines toiled to pull skyward. “They’re not exactly leaping off the runway,” said Paul Buxton-Carr, a Canadian pilot, as he watched the potbellied plane, designed to hunt submarines, climb toward its latest mission: dousing wildfires in the American West.


Matthew Staver for The New York Times
A tanker getting a new load of fire retardant on Thursday at the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan airport in Broomfield, Colo., as it prepare to head back to a fire.
As federal authorities confront the destructive start of what threatens to be one of the fiercest wildfire seasons in memory, they are relying on a fleet of ancient planes converted from other purposes to do the dangerous, often deadly, work of skimming the smoldering treetops to bomb fires with water and flame retardant.

The contractor-owned planes, refurbished from military use and leased by the United States Forest Service, have been hobbled by accidents and mechanical problems, leading to growing safety concerns and calls for a major overhaul. A decade ago, the government had 44 large tanker planes at its command. Now, with fires raging from California to Colorado to Wyoming, the regular fleet is down to nine.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/us/fire-threat-up-as-vintage-air-arsenal-shrinks.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[Ptah]

1. The Forest Service has taken some steps to modernize the fleet.

It announced this month that it would add three new tanker planes this season,
bringing its fleet up to a dozen, and four more next year. And it has already increased
the number of aircraft by temporarily leasing planes from firefighting outfits in Alaska, California and Canada.

[Lurks Often]

2. And it's going to get worse

There are going to be fewer and fewer aircraft being retired from the military that fit the required characteristics to make good fire bombers: A useful payload, relatively easy to fly, relatively cheap to fly and an airframe that can handle the multiple landings & takeoffs everyday and robust enough to handle the down drafts and updrafts associated with flying over a major forest fire.

The only 2 that spring to mind are C-130's that probably have an average of 25-30,000 hours on the airframe, which is near the end of their service lives. While you can stretch that somewhat, being used as fire bombers is hard on the airframe, as evidenced by the C-130 referenced in the article whose wing box failed and resulted in the wings folding up.

The other that springs to mind is the P-3 Orion, which has similar problems of being old aircraft with lots of time on the airframe.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Sooner or later they may have to actually commission them

No money for that

[Lurks Often]

4. I presume you mean allocate money for the

procurement of new built planes either suitable for the fire bombing role or purpose built for the role.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Purposely built

[Ptah]

8. Am I on your ignore list?

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. If you were, it would be funny

no

[Ptah]

10. I ask because you seem not to acknowledge progress that is being made.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. Sorry if I do not consider RENTING assets from private contractors

progress.

I would consider this progress if these air assets were part of a Forest Service FLEET.

[Ptah]

12. When has the Forest Service had a fleet of tankers?

[Ptah]

5. Neptune Aviation wins contract for 2 more retardant bombers

http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/neptune-aviation-wins-contract-for-more-retardant-bombers/article_fe36b3c8-b2eb-598f-a694-fc831449f6fc.html

Missoula’s Neptune Aviation will add two more jet-powered retardant bombers to its fleet
this summer under the U.S. Forest Service’s next-generation aircraft contracts announced Wednesday.

“We anticipate having both of those airplanes up no later than the first of August,” Neptune president
Dan Snyder said of the award for two BAe-146 aircraft. They will join a third BAe and seven
Cold War-vintage P2V propeller-powered planes in the Neptune firefighting fleet.

The Forest Service also granted Minden Aviation of Nevada a contract for one BAe this year
and one in 2013. Aero Flite Inc. of Kingman, Ariz., will bring on an Avro RJ85 — a longer version
of the BAe-146 — in 2013. And Aero Air LLC of Hillsboro, Ore., will add two MD-87 jet planes in 2013.

The contracts for seven new planes came ahead of a scheduled June 25 release date after
President Barack Obama signed legislation on Wednesday relieving the Forest Service of a 30-day
waiting period on major purchases. The bill passed both chambers of Congress by unanimous consent.

---------------------------

Looks like progress to me

[msongs]

6. "private contractors" = profits before anything else, like safety or upgrades nt

[ProgressiveProfessor]

13. There is a major problem with owning the aircraft on at least the Federal level

The Gov is not supposed to compete with private businesses, even internally. The government is not building airplanes or weapons in house for the same reason. As long as there are contractors willing to do the job, the gov will go to them first as policy. I assume there is also law or executive orders backing that up.

IIRC (its been a while) there were media reports that during a major SoCal fire, CA NG aircraft which could have been used for fire fighting were not until there were no contractor aircraft available.

The other issue is cost. Having a seasonal standby specialized air force is expensive. Be interesting to see any analysis of doing that vs contracting.