[joering2]

The system continues to be broken. Hundreds of millions going into building lethal drones to deploy to Afganistan/ME; some major american cities are on a brink of releasing police surveillance drones en masse (its constitution/law-questionable now), and yet we do not have drones to fight fire.

I am pretty sure there are lot of challenges within the project, but I can envision drones working together to connect each other and transport water to sprinkle it when needed without humans being endangered. I mean, if we achieved this [1], why not go further?

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDyfGM35ekc

[hga]

Errrm, this translates into a "making large drones" problem. Which has a whole set of additional problems, e.g. what are you going to say to the survivors of a devastated neighborhood when a big drone with lots of water crashes into it?

I'm not saying its insurmountable, just that it's way beyond the current levels of both drone technology and acceptance.

[joering2]

The biggest problem fighting fires are lethal to humans high temperatures and lack of easy access to places affected. Those two problems would be irrelevant to properly designed drones that can easy maneuver and are built from temperature-resistant materials.

Instead of huge drone carrying water (we already have planes to do that now), I was envision a network of connected drones that "pass by" the water as they hover in the line all the way from water pool to fireplace. The video attached previously shows you group of drones perfectly communicating with each other.

I never said it was easy to develop, but I have to disagree its something "way beyound the current levels" of technology. Further, the cost to design, develop and implement would be pennies comparing to an average damage of mid-size fire. Not the mention about life-loss.

[001sky]

You either need large payloads or large numbers, but Thousands of drones flying around would likely lead to accidents. Accidents woudl likely lead to new fires, considering most of these things are happening in areas that are tinderboxes with significant aggrivating factors (high winds, exposure, etc).

The strategy for containing these fires is typically fuel deprivation, rather than "flame extinguishment" which is so difficult if not impossible for the above reasons. The guys that jump out of planes to fight backcountry fires, for example, are armed with axes and saws. Absent something like a star-wars (AT-AT) its not clear a direct frontal confrontation is pyhsically feasible, even from the air, for many fires.