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The Military United States Science

Should the US Air Force Bomb Forest Fires? (popularmechanics.com) 342

Posted by BeauHD from the grounded-in-physics dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Mechanics: Earlier this summer, the Swedish Air Force dropped a laser-guided bomb on a forest fire to help suppress the flames. Now there's a proposal for the United States to do the same, using the might of the U.S. Air Force to fight America's raging forest fires via bombs and sonic booms. F-15 Strike Eagle Weapon System Officer Mike Benitez, writing in War on the Rocks, proposes using B-1 bombers stuffed to the gills with bombs to battle wildfires on the American homefront. The idea here is to snuff out fires the way you'd blow out birthday candles at the base. In Sweden, the shockwave from a single bomb snuffed out flames within a 100-yard radius of the impact point. So, Benitez reasons, why not load up a heavy strategic bomber with up to 84 bombs and do some serious firefighting?

Benitez chose the B-1 for his hypothetical scenario not only because of its bomb-carrying capability, but for the same reason the heavy bomber became a close air support platform of choice in Afghanistan: its long range translated into persistence over the battlefield, enabling the big bomber to hang around above friendly forces and bomb the Taliban for hours. The B-1 could do donuts in the skies over a wildfire as firefighters on the ground work out the best way to tackle it. The B-1 wouldn't carry just any bomb, either, but ordinance that was designed for firefighting. Most bombs use a steel casing that fragments into deadly shrapnel, but this would be unnecessary (and dangerous) when fighting fires. A firefighting bomb would use a combustible casing that would disintegrate on impact. Ideally the bomb would use a thermobaric warhead, one that kills via overpressure, as it generates even more powerful blast waves than traditional high-explosive bombs.
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Should the US Air Force Bomb Forest Fires? More

Should the US Air Force Bomb Forest Fires?

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  • KMFDM said it (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stormwatch ( 703920 ) <rodrigogirao@POL ... om minus painter> on Sunday August 12, 2018 @10:23PM (#57113994) Homepage

    Kill everything, kill everything, bomb the living bejesus out of those forests.

    • Re:KMFDM said it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ls671 ( 1122017 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @10:43PM (#57114062) Homepage

      Exactly, imagine being caught in a forest fire somewhere without anybody's knowledge and that you have managed to find a sweet spot to stay alive and then the bombs come at you. Now you really get the battlefield experience!

      Seriously, wild forest fire areas are hard to clear of human presence in advance due to their unpredictable nature. One might also think of animal casualties.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        That's rather unlikely. This sort of thing is done on the outer edges of forest fires, not the interior. The way they fight forest fires is by containing them and allowing them to burn whatever is within the containment region. It's just not feasible at this time to do any more.

        As far as animals go, that's pretty much a non-issue. The ones that can get out, get out and the ones that don't don't. Having animals hanging out there just at the edge of the fire would be highly unusual.

        That's not to say that this

        • Re:KMFDM said it (Score:5, Informative)

          by ls671 ( 1122017 ) on Monday August 13, 2018 @12:21AM (#57114408) Homepage

          That's not to say that this is a particularly good idea. A better idea would be to get better imaging technology involved and catch the fires when they're still small enough that a few dozen bucket loads of fire retardant are sufficient to do the job.

          I like your suggestion!

          On the other hand:

          As far as animals go, that's pretty much a non-issue. The ones that can get out, get out and the ones that don't don't. Having animals hanging out there just at the edge of the fire would be highly unusual.

          Don't take for granted that animals necessarily take the same approach as humans in case of a fire. Some take refuge in the very fire area:
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • Re:KMFDM said it (Score:5, Funny)

        by Etcetera ( 14711 ) on Monday August 13, 2018 @12:06AM (#57114354) Homepage

        Exactly, imagine being caught in a forest fire somewhere without anybody's knowledge and that you have managed to find a sweet spot to stay alive and then the bombs come at you. Now you really get the battlefield experience!

        Seriously, wild forest fire areas are hard to clear of human presence in advance due to their unpredictable nature. One might also think of animal casualties.

        https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708838/quotes/qt0341840 [imdb.com]
        [Odell has complained about "lightning bolts" falling from the ceiling]

        Danilo Odell: Yeah, what the hell was that thing?

        Lieutenant Worf: Automated fire system. A force field contains the flame until the remaining oxygen has been consumed.

        Danilo Odell: Ah, yeah, w-what if I had been under that thing?

        Lieutenant Worf: You would have been standing in the fire.

        Danilo Odell: Yeah, well, leaving that aside for the moment, I mean, what would have happened to me?

        Lieutenant Worf: You would have suffocated and died.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ls671 ( 1122017 )

          The difference here is that if he had had a breathable air supply, this is Star Trek after all, he might have still survived. With a bomb, much less likely.

  • On a small fire that has just started, this might work.... but once you've raised the temperature of everything to the point where oxygen supply is the rate limiting factor, I doubt this would work for more than a few minutes.

    I'm not a fireman, but this sounds implausible.

    • Re:Not really going to work (Score:5, Interesting)

      by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @10:33PM (#57114016)

      This is how they turned out some of the oil fires in Kuwait after Gulf War One. They packed barrels full of C4 and suffocated the fires out by displacing the oil as fuel with explosives to choke off the fire.

      Forest fires have much more spread, so you would need something like a MOAB (Massive Ordinance Air Blast) or several of them strategically aimed and timed to detonate at the same time around the fire to quench it.

      I thought a better solution would be to basically bulldoze the hills that are on fire with mountain-mover equipment. The large bucket in front of a huge tracked vehicle would smash the combustibles under the ground and stop the fire.

      • It sounds like these strategies would dramatically increase the cost of firefighting.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by plopez ( 54068 )

          I've heard the term "fire industrial complex" kicked around for a while. Increased cost would be good for the complex.

      • I thought a better solution would be to basically bulldoze the hills that are on fire with mountain-mover equipment. The large bucket in front of a huge tracked vehicle would smash the combustibles under the ground and stop the fire.

        Mountain movers are welded together on-site. It's not feasible to transport them to the sites of active fires.

        • Well not with current helicopters, but with newly designed drones it might not even be a real problem. Helicopters have securitymeasures for people, drones don't need that..

      • How about bulldozer drones?
        They could get up close and friendly with flames.

        • How about bulldozer drones?
          They could get up close and friendly with flames.

          Have you seen the movie killdozer?

      • Re:Not really going to work (Score:5, Informative)

        by meerling ( 1487879 ) on Monday August 13, 2018 @12:16AM (#57114384)
        Doesn't work if the material is too hot. Once the oxygen comes back, if the fuel source is still hot enough it just bursts back into flames. It's not like an oil/gas rig when the material is coming out in an unignited stream, and then hitting the burning part to ignite. In those cases the explosion breaks the stream and when it succeeds there's nothing left hot enough to reignite it. Part of the reason why have to remove some of the parts before they attempt it or the hot metal will just start the fire back up.

        Now trees don't move into the fire, rather the fire moves to them. Those glowing hot pieces of wood/charcoal are still glowing hot even after the explosion, so they are both a source of fuel and heat, all it needs is oxygen.

        There might be situations where it can potentially help, but a widespread fire has the nasty habit of just going back and reigniting fuel if conditions allow. (Uphill, downwind, etc.) So you are going to want to get a damn near perfect spread so there's not spots left that can reignite the whole mess again. Of course carpet bombing can provide quantity, but accuracy isn't part of that equation, for that you need smart bombs, either Laser or TV guided.

        Now here's the other part of this mess. Using real munitions is VERY expensive. If you add smart bombs to the mix, you've multiplied the price by many times! Sure the warhead is expensive, but the guidance unit is so much more expensive! As in you can buy a new Tesla for the price of one of those guidance units.

        Then there's all that talk about a combustible case for the warhead. Hey, great idea! Except there aren't any, and that would be an expensive thing to build. Did you know that STEEL case of a warhead serves the purpose of confining the explosive so it can build up a higher pressure so it's a high order explosion instead of a low order explosion? So unless you want to increase the number of bombs you have to use since you've very dramatically decreased the power of your explosive, that combustible casing has to be able to withstand the same kind of forces the steel one does. If you didn't know, that's not sheet metal those things are made out of. A blacksmith could cut sword blanks out of those things if they had some empties to play with. Not an oversized and insane anime or video game sword, just a regular historical sized one. (I'm not sure if the weight of an empty warhead casing is public info or not, so I'm not going to bring up specifics like that)

        So again, some situations may be able to use explosives, but most of the time it's a champagne in solid gold goblets kind of price tag to go with it.
        The special non-steel cases don't exist and somebody would have to develop them. There's a ton of issues with that idea.

        I see Saloomy brought up bulldozing. Yes, they do a lot of that to try and make firebreaks, but you again can't build those everywhere. It takes time, there are only so much equipment even available, and they have time limits to make it, and that's assuming the fire doesn't shift direction. Even then, there's always the problem that fires can and do jump firebreaks at times. Those burning bits get carried on the wind and can ignite a multitude of other fires on the otherside of the break. When some idiots from the OSI ignored multiple rules and did something really stupid, they burned down a lot of the forest that was on base. That area was used for wargames and training. The road between the bomb dump and the burning woods was acting like a firebreak, and for about an hour before they pulled us out my crew was driving around in our truck with all the fire extinguishers we could get our hands on chasing down the burning embers floating across on the light breeze.

        With a big fire, there's always a breeze, they are big enough affect the weather and create their own thermal updraft column.

        Anyway, not dissing the posters here, just spreading some knowledge.

        • Did you know that STEEL case of a warhead serves the purpose of confining the explosive so it can build up a higher pressure so it's a high order explosion instead of a low order explosion?

          The article mentions using a thermobaric charge, like a fuel-air explosive. They don't work like that.

        • Re:Not really going to work (Score:5, Informative)

          by DCFusor ( 1763438 ) on Monday August 13, 2018 @10:13AM (#57115942) Homepage
          Detonation vs deflagration. Meerling is simply wrong. A strong case hasn't been required since deflagrating black powder was replaced by real detonating explosives. For nitroglycerin, TNT, PETN, HMX, RDX and so on - a baggie will do. Yes, I've worked with high explosives. Numerous examples exist of a simple block of C4 or other explosive being used with just a blasting cap. Plenty of brisance to involve the whole mess before it breaks up when you use HE with detonation rates of a few km/second.

      • Using explosives on oil well fires has been a standard for decades, so much so that John Wayne made a movies about it in the 1960's. It was originally pioneered by "Red" Adair and Myron Kelly in the 1950's.

        Never heard of it being used for forest fires though.

    • Re:Not really going to work (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12, 2018 @10:53PM (#57114106)

      Also 30 meters is great but it is basically pissing in the wind for fires this size. The fire front from the Mendocino complex is over 45 km. The Carr fire, that I was evacuated for is currently about 24 km. (And this is after its ~50% contained)

      Those are huge walls of fire. We’d need an order of magnitude more than is suggested to really make a strategic difference.

      Look at the MODIS 1km FRP footprints back from a few days ago and see how many Megawatts per Sq KM these things were emitting. It was insane.

    • Has the rasionale changed? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @11:06PM (#57114160) Homepage Journal

      I was under the impression that forest fires are natural in a healthy forest, and in fact some trees need forest fires to germinate properly (the cones are heavy with resin, the heat of the fire causes the cone to fully mature and then go to seed after the fire has passed.)

      Also, by preventing fires the deadwood that would normally be burned accumulates, to the point where when a fire inevitably starts you get a torrentially large fire instead of the typical small fire (of a healthy forest).

      And so one way to prevent large forest fires is to frequently start smaller fires, to clear out the accumulating deadwood.

      I'm not a forestry expert, so I'm asking the question: has that explanation (and rationale) been disproven?

      If it hasn't, is there some reason why smaller "management" fires aren't periodically set?

      Is this a California thing?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by suutar ( 1860506 )

        I am not aware of any disproof of that theory. I suspect that one reason "management" fires aren't set is threefold:
        a) there's nobody available to keep an eye on them (at least, nobody whose time isn't already budgeted)
        b) if an accidental fire gets big, it's "shit happens". If a deliberate fire gets out of control, it's a lawsuit magnet.
        c) even if no deliberate fire gets out of control, the possibility is political ammo.

      • Re:Has the rasionale changed? (Score:5, Informative)

        by quenda ( 644621 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @11:36PM (#57114246)

        I was under the impression that forest fires are natural in a healthy forest, ...

        Is this a California thing?

        It depends which forest. In places where lightning is frequent, or humans have been burning the forest for long enough e.g. Australia or California, the forest has become dominated by fire-tolerant trees, and ones which germinate after a fire to take advantage of the sunlight reaching the ground.

        But in many coniferous forests, such as in Sweden and Canada, fires are rare and can completely obliterate a forest when they happen.
        So you can do frequent controlled burns to limit the build-up of flammable material, but you are going to have a very different kind of forest.

        • I'm not sure what kind of coniferous forests you think dont do well after a fire, but all the ones I have seen do very well.

          Fire damage takes a lot longer to regenerate in some other kinds of slow growing forests with fast germinating seeds (english oak stands spring to mind), but most coniferous trees are almost exactly NOT that...

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by zmooc ( 33175 )

          Nature is just what happens. This includes fires. Whether they are good or bad is only relevant in the human mindset, but I'm pretty sure the plants that grow in the aftermath of a forest fire are quite happy with the additional sunlight and nutrients they could otherwise not get.

          Given enough time, any forest will eventually catch fire and burn down. Lightning occurs everywhere and spontaneous combustion can and will happen everywhere. So if we want to let nature do its nature thing, we should just let it b

      • Re: Has the rasionale changed? (Score:4, Informative)

        by slacktide ( 796664 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @11:40PM (#57114268)
        They do set management fires, called controlled burns. They are typically done in the spring before everything dries out, so that they donâ(TM)t get out of control. They bulldoze firebreaks before setting the fire so the spread can be limited. https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail... [usda.gov]

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by plopez ( 54068 )

        Controlled blazes to clear out fuel has been done for decades. Nothing new.

      • Controlled burns are absolutely routine in California forests, certainly in the Eldorado National Forest near me. The fires would be even worse without our regular controlled burns.

    • Re:Not really going to work (Score:5, Interesting)

      by willy_me ( 212994 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @11:29PM (#57114230)

      The fire would go out but only for a while. It might work if there were firefighters ready to place water on what remains after a bomb is dropped. But with all the built up heat and partially burned wood, a normal forest fire would just re-ignite after a short period of time. After it re-ignites, it would quickly grow to be the same size it was before the bomb.

      This sounds too dangerous and not nearly effective enough to warrant doing. The one possible exception is is there was critical infrastructure about to be burned that had to be saved. Some bombs with a lot of firefighters could be a good combination. But realistically, the firefighters could also do it without the bombs.

  • An "ordinance designed for firefighting" might be a law banning drones, or something like that. I think the submitter means "ordnance".

  • Posse Comitatus Act (1878) bans military action (by the army, navy, air force, or marines) within the United States without prior congressional approval. The coast guard and national guard are not covered, though, so that's a back door (and why the coast guard is often involved in no knock raids, etc, that are no where near water).

    • You nailed it. It would require an act of congress, which can't seem to act.

    • If you've ever been to a military base, you might have noticed that everybody isn't just sitting on their ass all day. They are doing things. Which shows you that they are allowed to do things, inside the United States.

      The Posse Comitatus Act says the Army and Air Force can't be used for domestic *law enforcement*, except as authorized by the Insurrection Act and certain other situations, including enforcing federal law (see Little Rock 1956).

      Firefighting isn't law enforcement, so no Posse Comitatus issue h

  • Ideally the bomb would use a thermobaric warhead, one that kills via overpressure, as it generates even more powerful blast waves than traditional high-explosive bombs.

    A lot of these fires are near habitation. You can't just go dropping bombs anywhere. The Swedes were able to bomb their fire because it was on a bombing range.

    • Re:Maybe once it's out in the middle of a forest (Score:5, Funny)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @11:49PM (#57114306)

      The Swedes were able to bomb their fire because it was on a bombing range.

      Then just declare the entire existing fire area a bombing range - problem solved!

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Also, the Swedes didn't bomb the fire because it was the best way to deal with fire. They did it because there might have been undetonated shells in the area, making it dangerous to fight the fire with traditional means.

        The main reason I can see to use this method in the US is not because it is a practical or efficient method but because it is harder to get the budget for regular firefighters.
        You can probably bomb all the fires in California at the cost of a rounding error in the F-35-program. (Wikipedia sh

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Yes, I was wondering when someone would notice that.

      Also the 500 pound bomb extinguished flame "up to 100 meters" away. Let's be wildly generous and assume that everything within a 100 meter radius was extinguished. That works out to seven and three quarter acres per bomb.

      The Mendocino Complex fires were reported on July 27, when they burned about 4000 acres. Suppose you decided the very next day to send your bombers, and they arrived on the 29th. By then they'd be facing a fire of well over 50,000

      • Except you don't have to bomb the interior of the burned area. The purpose is to CONTAIN the file so the goal is to extinguish the fire at the periphery.

        Dropping fuel-air explosive (FAE) bombs along the edge of a fire, assuming a radius of 100 meters and dropping outside the burning area so the flames are pushed inward toward the burned area, should give each bomb a 100 meter front. You would then need 16 bombs per mile to blow the flames inward. Since a typical bomb load can be 84 bombs, each bomber co

        • "Dropping fuel-air explosive (FAE) bombs along the edge of a fire,"

          Fires tend to begin in inhabited areas. You can't drop bombs there without leveling bits of civilization. You might be able to use them once fires have grown into the wilderness. But you are proposing to simply knock over the fuel in adjacent areas and global warming has enhanced fire's ability to spread. You will have to bomb the interior as well, not merely the perimeter. You will also need overlap. You will also still need to do spot fire

  • I propose new fire suppressing missiles.

    --
    Only you can prevent forest fires -- S. Bear

  • It's the only way to be sure ...

  • Why don't we just learn the lesson and ban any construction that would cause us to care about the forest fires?

    I've known several people who built very cost effective homes where they just scooped a place out, built the home, and put the dirt over the top. As long as no trees are nearby to fall on it, those would likely survive most of these fires. They may have to leave to avoid suffocation, but their home would be fine when they return.

    Rather than fight mother nature, respect her and build with the assump

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by meglon ( 1001833 )
      We can do that with all the places in hurricane paths too... and tornadoes.... and earthquakes... and flooding.... and ice storms.... and coronal mass ejections....and...well fuck, that's the planet.

  • Pissing in the wind... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Strider- ( 39683 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @11:25PM (#57114224)

    I think people don't quite understand the magnitude of some of these fires. A few years ago I was on the ride out team for a charitable organization that operates a camp in the wilderness. On the day of our fire evacuation, the fire for into an old burn and proceeded to consume some 5000 acres in under 2 hours. The fire sent a plume some 50,000 feet into the air. We were about 6 miles away and the best way I have to describe this is watching a nuclear bomb going off in slow motion. It was the most awe inspiring spectacle I have ever seen.

    Anyhow, the only thing that the Airforce could really help with in these situations would be for the Air Mobility Command to turn some of their transport fleet into VLATs (Very Large Air Tankers) to help protect structures and people, and guide the fire. Directly attacking it is futile.

  • ... once the blast decayed and the oxygen returned to the hot embers?

    (That's a rhetorical question.)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      This doesn't work by depriving the fire of oxygen. It works exactly like blowing out a candle. When you blow out a candle you're actually providing it with *more* oxygen, but the fire goes out because you're physically moving the flame away from its fuel. .

      The interesting thing about a flame is that the actual combustion happens outside the wood. The heat radiates back to the wood and causes combustible compounds on the surface to volatilize. This is how the flame sustains itself: it's a chain reaction.

  • Let them burn (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @11:38PM (#57114264)
    Fires are natural part of the ecological cycle. Developed countries putting them out early [wikipedia.org] for nearly 100 years is what's causing more fires to occur - the buildup of vegetation (dead and live) means more fuel for new fires. The ecosystem needs fires every now and then to clear out dead brush (release the elements and chemical compounds they contain back into the ecosystem), and clear room for new plant growth (which supports different species than old growth). If you're not gonna let loggers thin out those trees, then you gotta let fires thin them every now and then.

    Forest fires happened for hundreds of millions of years before man arrived on the scene, and they never burned the entire Earth to a cinder. Leave them alone to do their thing. If they're threatening buildings, that's a sign that you need to build a bigger firebreak around those buildings. Not a reason to put the fire out.

    • Re:Let them burn (Score:4, Insightful)

      by LordFolken ( 731855 ) on Monday August 13, 2018 @02:59AM (#57114744)

      You are right, that forest fires are a natural occurrence.

      The problem today is scale and human interference.
      Around 1900 there where 1 Billion humans. Today there are 7.5. These want to eat, and that is why a lot of fires are man made. Look at south east asia, they have smog every year due to burning rain forest.
      The second problem is climate change. I can tell you first hand (i fly gliders, i'm a weather junky) that the weather has changed. Not necessarily the amounts of rain / dryness but the cadence. The whole process has sped up considerably, leading to a lot higher occurrences of storms and therefore lighting.
      So what used to be a once in 10 year event, is now occurring yearly.

  • Trophy homes. While letting it burn would be the best solution in many cases, the rich don't like it. Hence spending millions fighting a fire which shouldn't be fought.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Strider- ( 39683 )

      It's more complex then that. Originally the impetus to fight fires aggressively (starting post second world war) was to appease the lumber barons. This led to 50 years of fuel building up in the forests. Combine this extra fuel with climate change, and we're long part where "Let it burn" is a viable option in many cases. The fires now are far more intense and damaging both in terms of economic damage and environmental damage then they would have been historically.

      The only real solution, at least in the Paci

  • No. They shouldn't. The fires should burn. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 13, 2018 @12:13AM (#57114376)

    Fires are an incredibly important part of the ecosystem. Areas that have forest fires have greater biological diversity, healthier plants, and yes, some seeds even require the heat of a fire in order to germinate. This obsession with stopping all fires at all costs is hurting the environment.

  • Will someone please think of the ents? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jesus H Rolle ( 4603733 ) on Monday August 13, 2018 @01:10AM (#57114514)
    How long before the first ent wedding gets accidently bombed?

  • Foam (Score:3)

    by myid ( 3783581 ) on Monday August 13, 2018 @04:10AM (#57114908)

    Let's research how to make better fire-fighting foam. The foam would be cheap, easy to apply (ex: wouldn't get clogged up in hoses), and wouldn't mess up the environment.

    And there should be two options of how to package the foam:

    1) The standard, self-contained way to package it, which I guess uses an aerosol spray to shoot the foam out of the container. This way is simple, but when you transport the foam to the fire, you have to carry the water that's in the foam.

    2) A dry foam powder, which mixes with water fast and easily. So you would carry the dry powder to the fire, and combine the powder with a local water supply, such as a river or a water pipe. Then you'd shoot the water/powder combination at the flammable bushes or whatever, and it would expand into foam when it hit the open air. Something like that. This way is more complicated, but you don't have to transport the water.

  • Police and other government services love getting powerful military hardware. If this really were to work, we wouldn't end up with the military dropping bombs on forest fires, we'd end up with fire departments owning bombers, plus the creeps who get a kick out of having that much power and destruction at their fingertips. And we end up footing the bill.

  • These jets and chemical explosions would just produce more CO2 on massive scale. What was the root cause of these calamities in the first place.

  • Just to be sure.

    It's the one time it really fits and is on topic.

  • Seriously, our forests are loaded with dead trees due to beetle kill. Start harvesting the heck out of them and replant. This is much cheaper than bombing.

  • We need a special bomb (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Monday August 13, 2018 @06:51AM (#57115254)

    Concussion bombs could be a fast way of containing a wildfire, but are any currently available military bombs suitable for this application? The MOAB is an effective large airburst weapon, but they cost $16 million each and the USAF has a total of about twenty in inventory. We may be better off developing a special low-cost airburst device specifically for the job. These could be stored on military bases near fire-prone areas.

  • Nukes for Hurricanes and Bombs for fires... (Score:3)

    by Danathar ( 267989 ) on Monday August 13, 2018 @11:11AM (#57116318) Journal
    I bet somebody from the US Forest service is calling somebody at NOAA asking "So...how did you guys finally deal with people asking you to take care of hurricanes with Nuclear weapons?"

  • No (Score:3)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Monday August 13, 2018 @11:35AM (#57116482)

    Firefighters with TBI. Do not want.

    Seriously, ground crews work too close to water drop zones for this to be safe with explosives. The procedures needed to clear the area and verify that personnel were at a safe distance would take too long. People can't move quickly through dense forests. So this would really only be useful for inaccessible terrain.

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