“The Advantages of Fixed-Wing Operations”
donaldlloyd
in Climate Change, Crisis and Emergency Management, Emergency Management, Events, Government, Indigenous, Industry News, NGO, Tips
As an ex-smokejumper, I am a big proponent of fixed-wing platforms when it comes to fighting wildfires. And, having been on numerous wildfires as well as SAR operations in some of the most remote and dangerous terrain in Canada, I am also a big proponent of fixed-wing aircraft when it comes to accurately delivering personnel and equipment in a timely manner for a wider range of emergency management, public safety and defence operations such as floods, SAR, surveillance, and northern sovereignty.
My perception is that, while fixed-wing delivery of capability has proven to be cost effective and safe in wildfire fighting operations – arguably the highest risk of all aerial operations – it is highly underutilized in Canada as a multi-purpose approach to effective emergency resource management. This may be because many Canadian emergency management and public safety organizations are simply not aware of its advantages.
Fixed-wing platforms have many advantages including cost, distance, payload, stability, and versatility. A whole variety of fixed wing aircraft can be equipped for everything from surveillance, damage assessment, image and video capture, and safe personnel and payload delivery (including medical supplies) via parachute into remote and rugged terrain while supporting multiple incidents over vast distances on a single mission.
Fixed-wing aircraft can not only be kitted up for parachute operations, but they can also be fully supported by advanced incident management, communications, and situational awareness technology to enable timely information sharing from the aerial platform to remote command posts, and personnel operating at the tactical edge, no matter how remote, with reach back to an EOC. Moreover, fixed-wing operations can be supported by a flexible combination of contract resources and government personnel to limit expenditures in recognition of the seasonality of some operations or to extend the range of resource usage across more incident types throughout the year.
In Canada, we have all the subject matter expertise, equipment and financial resources needed to implement multi-purpose fixed-wing capabilities for emergency management and public safety operations on a much wider scale. This vastly underutilized operational model has the potential to increase significantly both the effectiveness and safety of emergency prevention and response activities.
For more information on this subject, feel free to message me any time. Stay safe!
