Originally Posted by
ramble on
Its criminal that we dont have a squadron of 10 dedicated CL415s operating here.
All of the east coast fires were within a reasonable flying time of a water body and 6-10 aircraft could have had a profound affect if utilised early.
The ground based forces dont have the big picture that you can get from simply flying at 35000 ft over the east coast.
Leadership and political guts are gone in Australia.
Either that or some simple diplomacy to coordinate with our northern Mediterranean brothers and sisters to use their CL415 assets during their winter. How many were sitting up there idle for the months of our devastation.
Its madness. The CL415s are strong, amphibious, flexible and can be utilised in other roles by the ADF when not firefighting.
Private companies and individuals are swooping on the fires as a profit making opportunity to rake in millions off the back of the Australian tax payer.
I watched so many small fires during this east coast travesty start as easily controllable small spot fires had they been snuffed out at early dawn. Instead they went burning on and escalated destroying so much especially as winds increased in the afternoons.
The 6 ton drops from a daisy chain of Canadairs will snuff out the edges and concentrate the fire front so that it can be smashed when it quietens - early dawn, or even at night on NVGs.
I don’t know the exact numbers, but there are some 802 air tractor airboss’s (ie on floats) in Australia.
what did they end up doing this season? That’s probably the best litmus test to see how CL415’s would go in Australia.