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Boeing Proposes Firefighting Artillery Shells

Interesting idea. Shame no tests have been done to see if it'd work. Controlled burns would give you a basic idea if it has any chance of working.
 
thejester said:
I would have thought that was another reason why the shells were unlikely to be cost effective. The payload of waterbombers is concentrated in one massive dump that smothers the fire. How effective is a series of much smaller deposits of retardent over a relatively large area? Are they likely to seriously hinder the movement of a fire front?
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What about Basicly half of the payload is wasted upon being unleashed did you not understand?

Look, I am not making this Aircraft Vs. Mortar. Both would be useful.

Aircraft for large scale and Mortar for fine application of retardant to control a fire or smaller fires. Even in a large fire, using this to prevent a fire from spreading towards populations, ect. would be useful. Controling a fire is more important than just trying to stop the while fire right away.

You can't pretend like this wouldn't be useful.

There's also the logistics - while aircraft are not as cost effective as trucks, they're much easier to operate (in some respects) in the kind of terrain you get wildfires in.
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Not even close. Like seriously not even close.

Do you realize how far away you can launch artillery?

I would have thought an Army artillery unit would probably be more effective using its vehicles and men to build firebreaks and rotate crews onto tankers.
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The army wouldn't be using this nessassarily, sure you would have a few military units in the firefighting segments playing with this, but it would be firefighters in general, military and civilian.

As for time better spent, who is to say they can't do both? Anywhere they can make a firebreak.
 
lets just hope they watch where their planting those shells. Coordinating ground crews and aircraft is hard enough without adding artillery to the mix.
 
I think that in practice this is going to be far from effective compared to pretty much anything else they is used. A good sized forest fire is a monster. Even if they can get a good yield on the shells it would take a huge amount to produce much of an effect. This reminded me when people talked about using nukes to disrupt hurricanes back in the 50-60's. In your head it sounds like a good idea. But when you do the math you realize the vast difference in their power.
 
tigros40208 said:
I think that in practice this is going to be far from effective compared to pretty much anything else they is used. A good sized forest fire is a monster. Even if they can get a good yield on the shells it would take a huge amount to produce much of an effect. This reminded me when people talked about using nukes to disrupt hurricanes back in the 50-60's. In your head it sounds like a good idea. But when you do the math you realize the vast difference in their power.
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It's not delivering explosives. It's delivering various chemical agents used in firefighting.
 
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