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Firefighting airmen get upgrade after 34 years

This summer is likely to be a busy wildfire season, but the airmen who fight those fires from the air are getting a major equipment upgrade.

Since 1974, airmen in the Guard and Reserve have battled fires with the Modular Airborne Firefighting System, a 3,000-gallon tank that disperses flame retardant liquid through a pair of nozzles. The systems are mounted in C-130s and drop their payloads out the rear loading dock.

By late fall, though, the four units that operate MAFFS are expected to transition to the MAFFS II, a long-delayed project featuring numerous improvements. The MAFFS II includes a tank that carries 400 more gallons, and a nozzle that shoots retardant with greater pressure and velocity out of a sealed portal on the plane’s left side. That means the plane can fly pressurized, and the crew and tail fin won’t get soaked by the fluid as it drops.

The MAFFS II will also allow airmen to disperse up to eight separate drops of fluid, five more than the older MAFFS.

The new system may also lead to safer flights for firefighting airmen, who must make drops at altitudes between 150 and 200 feet.

“Theoretically, we’re looking at that capability of maybe flying higher and faster,” said Maj. Bryan Allen, a MAFFS pilot with the 146th Airlift Wing. “What that does for us is it increases our safety margin.”

The new system is expected to debut late in this year’s forest fire season, which runs June 1-Dec. 1. According to Allen, MAFFS crews have been warned to expect a busy season.

“The prognosis is that it will be a more significant season than last year in that we’re in the La Nina process,” he said. The La Nina weather pattern moves counterclockwise, usually causing fires in Texas and Oklahoma before moving northwest and bringing fires through Oregon and into Southern California.

That means there could be plenty of work for the four units that fly MAFFS-equipped C-130s: the 146th, of the California Air National Guard; the 302nd Airlift Wing, Air Force Reserve, Peterson Air Force Base, Colo.; the 153rd Airlift Wing, Wyoming National Guard; and the 145th Airlift Wing, North Carolina National Guard. Each unit has two MAFFS, though the 146th has not flown any MAFFS for two years as the unit upgraded from C-130Es to J models, which cannot accommodate the original MAFFS. The MAFFS IIs will replace their predecessors on a one-to-one basis, but the older MAFFS will be kept ready in case the new system shows any problems, Allen said.

Last year, the MAFFS crews were only called out during the massive forest fires in Southern California that burned from October to early November. The crews flew 74 sorties before the fires were fully contained Nov. 9, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

In preparation, 146th airmen have set up their MAFFS at Channel Islands Air National Guard Station in California so that additional C-130s can be brought in and equipped if needed. All MAFFS crews and operators participated in annual training from May 5-9, and will now return to their home stations to wait until called upon.

For the small-knit MAFFS community, in which Reserve and Guard members may serve decades fighting fires together, the advent of MAFFS II is an exciting sea change, Allen said.

“It’s extremely exciting seeing this unit come to be,” he said. “It gives us more capability. It gives us more flexibility.”

And, he added, “It protects our people from getting wet.”

DISCUSS: The new system — is it enough?