Wednesday, May 4, 2022

Air Force Reserve C-130 planes are backup air tankers for wildfire readiness

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Topics for speeches are all around you. We live near the airport in Boise. The past few days I could both see and hear dark-gray four-engine C-130 Hercules assault-transport planes flying low overhead. What is happening is described in an article by Erin Banks Rusby at the Idaho Press and KTVB on May 1, 2022 titled MAFFS training as part of local and regional wildfire-readiness efforts.

 

MAFFS is the acronym for a Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System that can slide inside a C-130 and be used to drop 3,000 gallons of fire retardant. Some Air Force Reserve units have them. These planes will be called when needed to augment the commercial air tanker fleet. On August 15, 2015 I blogged about Fighting wildland fires: Hotshots, helicopters, and whatever else it takes.

 

The 2007 image of a C-130 with an earlier version of MAFFS is from Wikimedia Commons.

 


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