MAFFS: No Fire is Ever Worth a Life

Mobility Forum, Sep/Oct 2004 by Teague, Lillian

Fire is an awe-inspiring force. It can quickly blaze through a large area of land, leaving behind black, charred reminders of what was once green and lush. In the first 182 days of 2004, over 40,000 wildland fires had decimated 2,853,512 acres of land, almost 2 million acres more than in the first 182 days of 2003. Many fires start in inaccessible forest areas. The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) recognizes the advantage of using air power to help contain and suppress fires. The Air National Guard (ANG) and Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC) provide emergency support to supplement commercial airtankers on wildfires with the use of Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems (MAFFS).

"A lot of people get confused about how it's done; they've all seen the movies with airplanes flying through flames and putting out fires. We just don't do that. That would be horribly dangerous," says Lt Col Stephen K. Anderson, Deputy Commander for Operations (DO) for the 187 AS, Cheyenne, WY, ANG. "We stay well away from the fire. A lot of times you'll fly right next to a smoke column and be able to see the flames, but putting an aircraft through thick smoke will cause the engines to fail, and if you fly directly over the fire you can get some serious updraft damage to the plane and crew. We usually fly upwind of the fire and next to the fire to put down a line of what's called retardant."

The total MAFFS capability in the USAF lies in four air reserve component units. There are three ANG units and one AFRC that are trained and equipped to employ the MAFFS. There are eight MAFFS modules that are owned by the USFS and each unit is allocated two of them. The MAFFS units are:

* 153AW, Cheyenne, WY (ANU)

* 146 AW, Port Hueneme, CA (ANU)

* 145 AW, Charlotte, NC (ANG)

* 302 AW, Peterson AFB, Colorado Springs, CO (AFRC)

According to the USDA Fire and Aviation Management, "MAFFS is a self-contained reusable 3000-gallon aerial fluid dispersal system that allows Lockheed C-130 Hercules cargo/utility aircraft to be converted to wildland firefighting airtankers."

The system is designed to quickly adapt the C-130 from a military role to a fire-suppression role. Five tank modules store the retardant under pressure. Each of the five tank modules contains a pressure tank where compressed air is stored at 1,200 psi. The air compressor module, which provides air pressure for charging the system, remains at the airtanker base during air operations and is used between runs. The control module includes the master control panel, the loadmaster's seat, and discharge valves.

"It takes about two hours if you have experienced loadmasters and ground crew to load it all on the airplane and hook it all together," says Anderson, who has flown MAFFS missions for 11 years and is one of five MAFFS Instructor Pilots. "Each tank is on a separate pallet and one just plugs into another with seals. Then you pressurize it and load it up with water and test it. In about two hours we can load it all up and be ready to go."

When equipped with MAFFS, the C-130 is able to carry and drop between 2,700 and 3,000 gallons of fire retardant or water. The entire load is discharged in 6 to 10 seconds through two tubes at the rear of the plane, covering a one quarter mile by 60 feet section of land. While water is sometimes dropped directly on a fire, the retardant is laid out ahead of the fire, or at its edges, to inhibit or retard the fire's growth. The retardant inhibits the combustion potential of trees and shrubs. It is colored bright red or fuchsia to help airtanker pilots observe the accuracy of their retardant drops.

"There's a difference between a fire extinguisher and a fire retardant," says Anderson. "If you were to drop the retardant directly on the fire, it would probably cool a fire down for a few seconds, and then it would be right back where it was. The retardant is instead dropped on the wood outside the fire, creating a chemical reaction to where the wood will no longer support the fire. We do this to control the fire's direction; that's what we are there for."

The MAFFS crew can make variable drops over the fire using pre-selected flow rates at the control module. Unlike a gravity system in which the aircraft's center of gravity moves aft as the retardant moves to the rear of the plane, MAFFS discharges the retardant alternately from the tanks, so that the center of gravity remains within limits. The tankers can be reloaded and flight ready in less than eight minutes.

The flying crew is a standard C-130 crew with two loadmasters, making a six member crew. In accordance with military requirements for initial qualification and recurrent training, MAFFS crews are trained every year with USFS aviation personnel.

"Every year for a week in May, the four MAFFS organizations attend a Forest Service sponsored yearly training, which one of the four units will host. It is for the training of our crews and for the training for the Forest Service lead plane pilots. In our unit, we pick the senior, most qualified to perform the missions. We usually have 10-12 crews qualified. You either have people who are receiving initial training or those receiving requalification training."