I repeat - we need a fleet of these:
Instead, we get a fleet of these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack-class_submarine
We be fucked up in the fucking head.
Only issue is the ongoing costs of them. Theyre a huge money sink for the amount we would use them. To have them sitting in the shed for 95% of the time, whilst having continued staffing, support, maintenance and crews on the books. Thats per plane, then you need spotter planes, the facilities to store them, staff to refill them with retardant etc etc
Its pretty much $1 per litre to drop fire retardant (just the retardant itself), so think the big dc10s is 40k per drop and they can manage 8-10 drops in a day, and that drop will go for 1-1.5km. Thats a huge amount of money, which I know last year took up a huge amount of the budget for firefighting activities
Realistically we need more ongoing contracts with the guys over in the US to supply them here for the vast majority of the fire season IMO. But its also good to remember we do also have a large number of contract helicopters and some Air Tractors based in Australia to help out