Mikes right, military assets are extremely useful to support logistics (as we are seeing right now), but that’s because support logistics are very common between emergency and warfare situations.
Dual-role tactical functions not so much. It’s no different to trying to use a DH MTB as a commuter for 20km of road riding. You can do it, but it just outright doesn’t make sense. Military hardware is also massively more expensive to operate per hour. The fuel burn, maintenance cycle and so on are far lesser considerations compared to their role capability.
Converting our C130’s to Fire Support roles would be useful if we didn’t life-cycle to the margins of their effective service life in Defence use anyway.
Coulsons C130 probably has a few more airframe hours up its sleeve but C130’s are very rarely available to civilian purchase (there’s like 4! globally in non-government hands). That said using Airforce C130’s and C17’s to get the right firefighting equipment where it’s needed would be smart.
The best bet is 737 based airframe conversions, they are far more readily supported on the ground, can do logistics and water bombing. They have the deployment speed and range to be operating anywhere in Australia within 12 hours from cold-start and realistically we would need maybe 4 of them nationally as any more than 2 operating in a single fire zone would be pretty risky.
Do we a national capability - yes - but part of that needs to be buying capabilities that can dovetail around assets we have for other purposes. Should we have a National pool of firefighting hardware (trucks, tankers logistics support gear) that perhaps is managed and mobilised by Defence? Maybe - that’s starting to sound a little like some of the USA National Guard roles, and that perhaps isn’t a terrible thing.
