Their sensors were used to detect Taliban fighters hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan and track Iraqi troop movements in the desert.

Now the pilotless drone aircraft known as UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) are being enlisted on the domestic front to fight forest fires.

The cameras, heat sensors and other devices aboard the unmanned aircraft can show fire locations, spot people on the ground, record temperatures and wind speeds, and transmit other data to ground-based computers which can be relayed for fire crews.

The advantage of the drones over conventional piloted planes and helicopters is that they can fly for long periods of time over high-risk areas, day or night. Air operations at wildfires are usually suspended at sunset, [Assistant Post Fire Chief] Allen Currier said.

The military uses of this technology get all the press. Let’s face it, those will be the operations that get the bucks first from our government. Still, this is a step forward in the whole process of translating taxpayer dollars directly into taxpayer benefits.

I can see a whole generation of geeks turning their joystick skills into flying pilotless aircraft.



  1. Gary Marks says:

    It breaks my heart that Smokey Bear isn’t still around to see this happen. He inspired several generations with his famous saying, “Only you can prevent forest fires.”

    His lesser-known saying was…
    “Yes, of course bears sh*t in the woods.”

  2. Bryan K says:

    Yippie for UAVs, it’s a lot safer to send a UAV into a hostile zone and crash then to send in a pilot and have some kind of disaster occur.

  3. Sounds The Alarm says:

    #2.

    A lot less sexy though.

  4. C0D3R says:

    Civilian uses of these UAV’s are the thing to watch. Televised police pursuits, civil unrest aerial coverge, traffic reports, and local sporting events will be well under the budget for any TV market.

    This video will of course be aggregated so the best, and worse, is picked up for all to see on CNN, the NBC Nightly News, and You Tube.

    Remember the Columbine High kid bleeding and falling from the window ledge live? Each station in big towns will have a dozen or more of these birds (as will the local police.)

  5. Neal Saferstein says:

    How UAV’s on the border?

    Neal Saferstein

  6. Cognito says:

    Do these things never crash and burn?

  7. ab cd says:

    So you support the government tracking of citizens?

  8. bdgbill says:

    I wonder how long it will be before swarms of these things are flying over every highway in America writing hundreds of speeding tickets an hour?

  9. Bryan K says:

    #7 quit the paranoia. You don’t like it, move to Canada.

  10. Brian says:

    “#7 quit the paranoia. You don’t like it, move to Canada.”

    We have enough of our own thank you very much.

  11. mike cannali says:

    what next – hellfire missles for those who don’t put out campfires

    Soon there will be so many UAVs flying that they will need their own air traffic control


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