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Air Force UAVs to help fight Calif. wildfires

NASA and the Air Force plan to fly over Southern California on Wednesday with their UAVs to help firefighters combat raging wildfires that have devastated the region.

A NASA spokesman said the agency’s Ikhana UAV — a version of the Pentagon’s Predator B built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems — is being readied for a nine-hour mission from the Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

The Air Force plans to fly its Global Hawk by Northrop Grumman on daily 16-hour missions over the coming seven days from Beale Air Force Base near Sacramento, one source said.

Since the weekend, wildfires ranging from Santa Barbara south to the Mexican border have consumed some 300,000 acres, destroying more than 1,000 homes and businesses, and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands, some 300,000 of from San Diego county, which is home to major defense contractors.

“We are hoping to launch tomorrow for a nine-hour mission, with the possibility of follow-on missions Thursday and Friday,” Fred Johnsen, a Dryden spokesman said Tuesday. “The Ikhana is on the ramp and you can see the smoke from the Arrowhead fires about 70 miles away. Everyone’s leaning forward to make this happen. The airplane is ready; the instrumentation package is ready.”

The images from the Ikhana sensor — developed and built by NASA’s Ames Research Center near San Jose — will be transmitted to a ground station where they will be overlaid on maps found on Google’s Web site, Johnsen said. The goal is to help guide firefighters to hot spots obscured by smoke.

NASA acquired the aircraft last November from General Atomics Aeronautical Systems in San Diego, which was delivered to Dryden in June for use in aeronautics, climate and atmospheric research, as well as tracking wildfires. The aircraft flew four flights as part of the Western States Fire Mission between mid-August to late September.

“We are excited to help firefighters do what they can to fight these fires,” Johnsen said.