Smoke Scout - The idea

Even the largest wildfires start from a single small source. If the fire can be identified early, within the first hour, then it would be much easier to put it out. The best way to keep an eye on large swaths of land is with an army of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

The UAVs would be something like the Silent Falcon, except about two or three times larger. With that additional size would come more payload weight for sensors and rechargeable batteries as well as a large wingspan covered completely with solar cells that would allow the UAV to stay airborne for months on end. The solar cells would be large enough to keep the UAV afloat and to charge the batteries, so it could stay up at night. The UAVs would communicate what they were sensing with ground-based control stations that would also give the UAVs their future flight paths.

There would have to be enough UAVs to cover the areas most in danger of wildfires. Each UAV would be able to see about one mile in each direction. If each UAV followed a track as shown below, the loop would be 72 miles, which could be accomplished in an hour and allow the UAV to sense the state of 144 square miles of ground.

So, it would take 900 UAVs to blanket Colorado. Realistically, only small percentage of the state is at high risk for wildfires at any given time. If only 5% is at risk, then only 50 UAVs would be required to keep the state safe. Each UAV would cost about $400,000 or $20 million to cover the entire state.

After a fire is detected, airplanes loaded with water or fire suppressant need to be scrambled to contain the blaze. These plans can fly at over 500 miles per hour, which means that a fire in practically any part of the state could be reached within 20 minutes of takeoff. If firefighting planes are takeoff ready within 10 minutes, then a fire could be suppressed within at most an hour and a half.

Now, there are already satellites that try to detect wildfires. The problem with existing solutions is that the satellites are in lower earth orbit (LEO) and only sweep over a particular area once a day or every other day. Satellites in geosynchronous orbit (GEO) would be able to stay over a single state; however, satellites in GEO would be dozens of miles further away from Earth making sensing the fires nearly impossible.