Fire-Fighting Howitzer Round

[cflord]

Boeing Wants to Patent a Fire-Fighting Howitzer Round by Patrick Tucker (Technology Editor for Defense One.), August 23, 2016:

Suppressent-filled shell would help firefighters gun down wildfires.

The best way to fight fires may just be to shoot them. Boeing — better known for making aircraft than ammunition — has applied for a patent for a firefighting artillery shell.

Dropping fire suppressant material out of planes and helicopters is still relatively inefficient, albeit safer and faster than relying on trucks and firefighters on the ground. Got a blaze stretching over 883 acres? It will take more than 34 hours to airdrop the necessary 360,000 gallons of fire suppressant, according to the National Wildfire Coordinating Group’s Incident Response Pocket Guide. “During the 34.3 hour time period, the relatively large 883 acre fire has potential to grow and burn an estimated 3,130 acres of land,” the application notes.

Instead, Boeing suggests, firefighters might get the job done faster by launching salvos of special 155mm shells from a dozen or more miles away. Packed with fire-suppressant material, the shells are fired from a field howitzer — perhaps BAE Systems M777 or one of the models from Swedish arms dealer Bofors. The shell releases its load over the fire thanks to “a device comprising a timer, an altimeter, an accelerometer, a global positioning device, a temperature sensor, a pressure sensor, or a distance measuring device.”

Boeing officials estimate that each shell could put about one to six gallons of fire suppressant (depending on its load; less material means more range) on a 100-square-foot area. Steady firing with three-gallon shells could deliver 214,000 gallons of fire suppressant in about six hours — about twice as fast as a helicopter.

“Some guns may deliver the fire-retarding material within 15 feet of a target at a 15 mile range. In other embodiments, the range of the artillery shells fired by the guns and the accuracy of the guns, which delivers fire-retarding material, may vary depending on the particular artillery shells and guns used,” the application reads.

The solution may not a be a substitute for aircraft, but could be a valuable contribution, one that’s desperately needed as hotter and drier conditions, and more human settlements near fire-prone areas, are leading to a rise in mega fires. There are currently more than 32 fires raging across the United States, which has lost more than 4 million acres in 2016 so far. If firefighters are at war, perhaps they should be better armed.

The application, filed in 2014, was made public at the end of July.


Keep the shiny side up and the dirty side down!

Ret SMSgt Cliff Lord - C-130 Flight Engineer & Mechanic

[Paul K]

That's an intriguing idea. It's almost literally 'fighting fire with fire' - artillery fire !

[crazac]

Yea, cool! High tech balloon launcher.

Seems like a good fit for initial response, small and maybe a mop up jobs on Wild lands. Once Air and ground crews are inbound, it seems like not the best idea.

Fun tho. Thanks for the post.

[Nick - A2A]

Interesting article Cliff, thanks for posting it.

Steady firing with three-gallon shells could deliver 214,000 gallons of fire suppressant in about six hours — about twice as fast as a helicopter.

According to quick, back-of-an-envelope calculations, around 100 M777's would be needed to deliver this quantity of suppressant given their sustained fire rate of 2 rounds per minute. If we're comparing with a relatively small helicopter like the UH-1H with a 360 gallons capacity, I'd estimate 50 aircraft could do the job given a sortie rate of 2 drops per hour.

However, not hard to see where Boeing's interest lies. If we guess that each one of the GPS-guided rounds they develop costs say, $100,000, the 70,000 plus rounds needed in their little example would come in at a cool $7 billion!

Now, if we compare to a more capable helicopter such as the Sikorsky S-64 with a 2,650 gallon capacity, I reckon 8 could do the same work as those 100 howitzers and their 7 billion dollars worth of fire-fighting rounds. Now, I'm not sure of the operating costs of an S-64, but I reckon you'd get a fair bit of change from 875 million dollars for six hours work! Even if we're talking rounds which are an order of magnitude cheaper (say $10,000) the figures still don't seem to stack up.

Cheers,
Nick

[KotatehFox]

i like the idea, but i dont see where you get the whole 2 rounds a minute thing, a decent artillary crew can fire off more shells than that per minute, the kv-2 for example had a 152mm howitzer, it could pump out way more than 2 rounds per minute, 5-10 rounds per minute was about average if i recall depending on the loaders skill, now here we are talking about a howitzer used for firefighting, why would you think it costs $100,000 per round? even modern tank rounds dont cost that much, and we are only talking about artillary here, and for years they have been able to place rounds fairly on target at range with no sort of guidance what so ever, im sure that they could devolop the rounds for maybe a few thousand dollars if that..they dont need any fancy devices inside, maybe a simple timer if that, or they could just simply have some sort of impact detonation..there really is no need to make this at all complicated, in fact a simple temperature sensor would do just fine..im sure you can get decent sensors for almost nothing...i say its completely possible to make this effective as long as they dotn go overboard with this, the rounds dont have to be fancy just effective

[Nick - A2A]

[...] i dont see where you get the whole 2 rounds a minute thing [...]

I'll admit I was somewhat surprised by the fairly low sustained fire rate for the M777 but it's right here from the manufacturer (PDF download).

why would you think it costs $100,000 per round?

Given that this is just a patent, I plucked a figure for a bespoke guided fire-fighting round from thin air! However, according to Wikipedia the M982 guided Excalibur round has a unit cost in excess of $258,000.

As I say, even if the cost of the rounds was only around $10k, I can't see how this would be feasible compared with helicopter suppressant drops, but then again, I guess the guys at Boeing spent more time doing the math than I did!

Cheers,
Nick

[Piper_EEWL]

Interesting approach to this issue. But I agree that it probably is more expensive especially when you need it in addition to the aircraft and helicopters and then the two can't operate at the same time. Maybe the howitzer solution could be used if weather or daytime don't permit flying!? Btw how would the artillery get to the sight it's needed at?

Oh and don't forget that patents often are filled even if there is no real desire to put the plan into action. This is just to prevent anyone else to use that idea.

[Nick - A2A]

Btw how would the artillery get to the sight it's needed at?

Exactly what I was thinking. The US is a mighty big country and to transport them by road would surely take too long. I know, let's use... helicopters!

Nick

[Piper_EEWL]

Exactly what I was thinking. The US is a mighty big country and to transport them by road would surely take too long. I know, let's use... helicopters!

Or drop them from a C-130!? So many options

[crazac]

but it's way more fun to use giant expensive guns!

Ok, planes and choppers are cool to

All good points you guys have.

[Lewis - A2A]

hehehehe

http://previews.123rf.com/images/TheoSi ... -Photo.jpg

[KotatehFox]

transport them by rail to their destination and ship them by truck, or you could airlift a few of them if you have to do so, then transport them to a suitible location via truck like they did a long time ago, artillary can fire shells miles away so you would just have to get them into position..the fire rate is slow, too slow...even slow for anything we use today, some arty can fire off several shells with a respectable accuracy in around a minute, given this is a high tech military vehical, it should be rather easy to load and fire more than just a few rounds per minute, there is zero need for any guidance since all of that is done by aiming the barrel of the gun different directions, a simple soloution would be to make custome arty guns for this purpose, something light and easy to move because the only thing that has to be strong is the barrel its self, you do that and you have something you can work with, wouldent be that hard to move either...as for the rounds, you could just take the explosive out of he rounds and fill it with the chemical they use for putting out fires, maybe re design the round a little..just impact rounds is all you need, make sure it spreads the stuff out to where its feasable, or a timer maybe, so you cand etonate it in the air..idk but it shouldent be that complicated, no fancy tech needed really

[Nick - A2A]

[...] no fancy tech needed really

Only thing is, I believe Boeing closed down their "no fancy tech" department a few years ago!

Nick

[KotatehFox]

yep...leave it to a company like them to make something simple so overcomplicated, i see this idea as being very benificial but they are ggonna find a way to over complicate it

[crazac]

So, thinking about this further, instead of a land based gun, what about focusing on something like the 105mm that's in the AC-130?

And maybe even having some kind of scatter bombs.

I don't know if that really helps the scramble time but... If it the plane was already loaded.