ccjersey - 1/12/2025 16:33

Biggest problem is plain water, salt or fresh, is not very effective when applied by fixed wing aircraft on fires in the very dry windy conditions.

It’s not nothing, but retardant is the gold standard. Water applied by a helicopter can keep it concentrated enough to be more effective.

There is also the problem of being able to skim the surface of a large body of water like a bay of the ocean vs a reservoir or lake. Wind speed may slready a problem for safely dropping the water on target even without the danger of impacting swells while scooping water.

I wouldn’t believe a lot of the stuff that’s put on social media looking for clicks. Like a lot of the AI generated crap that people post. Most of it’s so inaccurate that it generates a lot of clicks and responses by people that know it’s wrong. So the creater that posts it spends very little effort on it but gets more rewards than if it was well researched and fact checked before posting.

Those water scooping bombers are contract assets from Canada. The fire season is in summer up there so they are available to go south during winter months. Some go to Australia as well.