To those in the know can you enlighten us. Why are many of the current fire fighting aircraft in Australia foreign owned and operated? It would appear mainly from the US and Canada.

Is there a reason Australian industry is unable to provide this taxpayer funded multi-million dollar service?

Capability restrictions? Hinderance from CASA? Australian government tender process?

B737 - 15,000 litres capacity
Air Tractor 802 - 3000 litres capacity. And almost certainly can deliver load with better precision.

Surely, 5 x Air Tractors are cheaper town and operate than a single 737? Not to mention the issue of redundancy.

doesn’t quite work that way. It has a lot to do with drop patterns, variability of the tank etc

think right tool for the job, you don’t use 10 ball peen hammers to do the job of a sledgehammer.

every aircraft has it’s place even though it may not seem apparent at first.

I think you need a mixed fleet for economy of effort.

To use a 737, C130 and other big iron is nice, but you need a dedicated water supply, pumps and mixing tanks capable of refilling the aircraft quickly and there aren’t going to be many of these necessarily near a fire and they are rather a blunt instrument compared to a SEAT or a helicopter with a bucket.

I fought one fire last year which luckily was only about 8km from the regional base and also luckily three SEATS were available.

They set up a circuit so we got a drop about every ten minutes and they controlled one inaccessible flank of the fire, leaving us to deal with the other one. A B737 or C130 would have been overkill and probably not very effective as this fire was on a hillside where access was difficult and you needed to confirm it was out by stages. The smaller aircraft controlled by the spotter helicopter was able to target the drops very precisely which meant we didn’t have to run and hide all the time because the drops could be synchronised with our work rate, it all worked out quite well.

Later we had the Myhree fire where there was a lot of forested ridgetops burning and the potential of losing a lot of the King valley grape harvest due to smoke taint. The C130’s did a great job on the main fire fronts which were large and inaccessible. All we had to do was watch the edges and look out for spotting.

I flew about 5 or so seasons with B412/212’s on fires in Australia and honestly the heavy aircraft have their place.

until you’ve seen them in action on the fires where they had devastating effect you won’t be a convert like I was.

on the first fire I mentioned, a big aircraft would have been impractical. The fire was relatively small and access was difficult - steep paddock leading up to the edge of forest, erosion gullies and old fences everywhere. We had about five trucks in.

For a big dump, it would have taken us at least three quarters of an hour to get clear and the same to get back. The little aircraft were bombing about 75 to 100 metres away which meant we didn’t have far to go to get clear and return, at least that’s my recollection. A big “nuclear “ retardant drop was probably out of place. The SEATs did just fine.

Not so the Myhree fire, which got started by two kids doing circle work in an old car in a grassy paddock.

like i said there’s a time and place for every tool in the shed, you personally just haven’t seen the need yet, doesn’t mean there isn’t the need.

There’s a need alright. We had the C130s at the Myhree fire. Bigger would have been better.

The SEATS are also very good as quick response, faster than the hero’s and our tankers.