Originally Posted by
finestkind
No question on training but considering the helo assets we have and the training that is done from night ops, confined spaces, under slung loads, etc its not a large stretch of the imagination that a wee bit more training in water dropping would not be an excessive task.
I sail with a former black hawk, now MRH90 pilot, he says they were trained in bambi bucket operation (didn't say when) because they could be called upon to quench fires on military property/ranges where could be unexploded ordenance. Every so often they re-practice it. He said in theory he could do it, has all the flight skills to do it, but know nothing about fires he would need to fly in the left seat of an experience fire fighting pilot before he thinks it would be more than a token effort on their part.
Thats completely ignoring the cost of running a military chopper vs civilian which is 3times more expensive per flight hour