Smokey the Bear Says: Let the U.S. Air Force Bomb Forest Fires | The National Interest Blog: The Precision Container Aerial Delivery System, or PCADS, is the brainchild of William Cleary, a Boeing aircraft engineer who got the idea 13 years ago after his young son dropped a water balloon on him from a third-floor window. Like the apple landing on Isaac Newton's head, the knock on Cleary's noggin inspired him to wonder if forest fires could be extinguished by parachuting boxes of water on top of them.
PCADS consists of pallets of triple-walled corrugated cardboard boxes, each containing a 250-gallon biodegradable polyurethane bladder filled with water or fire retardant gel. The container has a pyrotechnic fuse timed to burst at least 300 feet above the ground, spreading the water over a large area.
PCADS, which is being marketed by California-based Flexible Attack Innovations (Boeing is no longer involved with the project), can be used with any transport that uses the Container Delivery System, or CDS, which the U.S. military has used as far back as the Korean War to parachute supplies. This includes many military transport aircraft, including C-130s, C-17s, C-27s, V-22s, CH-53 helicopters and even Russian IL-76s and IL-78s.
