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Should the US Air Force Bomb Forest Fires? (popularmechanics.com)
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.
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.
Kill everything, kill everything, bomb the living bejesus out of those forests.
Circumcision is child abuse.
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.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Why not? California does give the US Federal Government more in taxes than any other state, by a lot!
Oversimplifying and collectivizing people is what made the annoying orange be the president in first place, and what makes the far left be so fucking lunatic (as is the thing that makes the far right be fucking lunatic as well).
So better start to treat people individually or get plowed by the "exception".
You have to remember that 1% of the US population is still 3.4 million people, and many simplifications made by both sides assume that groups of like 10% don't actually exist.
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.
You mean the 500+ wildfires across the entire western US region were started by a single arsonist, or was it a vast "arsonist conspiracy"? Were those same arsonists able to secure air travel on a supersonic jet to travel from California to Portugal several times per day during the 46 C extremes?
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?
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.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
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.
Fires are natural part of the ecological cycle. Developed countries putting them out early 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.
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.
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.
Then it's *still* irrelevant, because fire-fighting is not law-enforcement. What are they going to do, arrest the fire and send it to jail?
How long before the first ent wedding gets accidently bombed?
You really can't talk meaningfully about trends by examining individual events in isolation.
Climate change is neither necessary nor sufficient for the kinds of fires we are seeing. However, in places prone to wildfires, wildfire is a seasonal phenomenon, and the lengths of fire seasons over the last forty years has increased by 19%, and the area burned in fire seasons has more than doubled. Wildfires are only possible when three factors are present: fuel, ignition sources, and dry weather. While the acreage and number of fires *might conceivably* be due to increased fuel or ignition sources, the lengthened fire season is pretty obviously correlated to prolonged dry seasons.
It's probably meaningless to ask whether anthropogenic climate change "caused" any particular fire or set of local fires, because such fires could happen in a steady state world, or a cooling world. The more narrowly you look in space and time the less meaningful the question is. But the overall global, multi-decade trend to more area burned and longer fire seasons is a different kettle of fish.
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I would expect this to actually work less effectively the larger the bomb is. The reason is that the force of the bomb is distributed through a spherical volume proportional to its yield, but the fire is spread over a two-dimensional surface. So area of a given level of destruction goes up as the 2/3 power of yield.
This is why gigantic bombs are largely impractical. In most cases they're less effective than a equivalent weight of smaller bombs. MOAB weighs as much as 43 Mark 82 500 pound bombs; it has as much H6 as 97 Mark 82s, but destroys an area equivalent to 21 Mark 82s.
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The person calling someone an idiot is a shameless outright liar with a political agenda, big surprise. (No, California doesn't have a shortage of firefighting water like you read on twitter either.)
I see the controlled burn notices and the plumes of smoke every spring, and they've been increasing in frequency in recent years as the fire danger has grown. Here's a source from 9 months ago noting that California's controlled burns have doubled in the past 3 years and is now 31 square miles of controlled burns a year: https://weather.com/en-CA/cana...
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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.
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.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!