My letter to Senator Merkley:
The subject is defense of Oregon from fire. Thanks for your email on the subject.
Recently I watched commercial aircraft drop fire retardant on the Two Bulls fire from my home in Bend. Effective but not a full force "Shock and Awe" attack necessary to turn the tide and quickly stop the advance of the fire.
Since military retirement I have frequently flown on Air Force flights on various air craft all designed to deliver heavy payloads on target. C5A, C141, C-17's They should all be assigned the mission of fire fighting and equipped to undertake this mission as a rapid response.
The Air Force will say that is not their mission for these aircraft. I think that it should be. On several ships during my navy career we frequently conducted fire drills. It was not an exercise where all hands were mustered to piss on the fire. We attacked it with everything we had with the best weapons we had to fight it. We attacked and defended in the same manner as going to General Quarters.
McChord AFB is home to these heavy lift aircraft. Google Earth shows 22 of them on this base and 10 at Travis AFB. There are more elsewhere. A whole fleet of them.
So many thing are called a war now. This is a war on fire. The Air Force should fit heavy lift aircraft with modular attack ability and come to the aid of two Ericson Aero Tankers that dropped retardant on the Two Bulls fire and a few helicopters that also participated. Each tanker can drop 33,000 lbs. of retardant. A C-17 has a 177,900 lbs. load capacity.
5 or 10 C-5 and C-17's in a row is shock and awe and what it takes to win a war on fire. The Air Force Modular Airborne Fire Fighting (MAAF) system at 302nd Airlift Wing Peterson Air Force Base, Colo. is C-130 capable of dropping 2,700 lbs of retardant from a modular unit in the aircraft.
We have better weapons available in the inventory to fight fires!
There is also a life saving aspect to attacking and stopping a fire fast and effectively.
No comments:
Post a Comment