The rise of firefighting drones: From surveillance to frontline response
August 23, 2025
As climate change fuels ever more frequent and intense wildfires, the race is on to find new ways of fighting them. Helicopters and water bombers will remain essential tools, but drones could soon take on the most dangerous missions.
Oregon studies uncrewed drones for remote firefighting operations
The US state of Oregon is just one of many regions exploring the use of uncrewed aerial vehicles to help tackle wildfires.
The state signed an agreement with Yamaha Motor Company on 14 August to study the use of Yamaha’s FAZER SAR uncrewed helicopter to fight wildfires.
The study will explore the feasibility of using the drone in a firefighting context, including exploring regulatory pathways, payload integration and coordination.
“This is a forward-looking collaboration to understand how aviation technology, especially uncrewed systems, can augment our wildfire response toolkit,” said Kenji Sugahara, director of the Oregon Department of Aviation.
Firefighting drones are a priority for Oregon
Although remote firefighting has been under consideration for years, its feasibility is now only coming to the fore as new drone and uncrewed aerial vehicle technology develops.
While these aircraft won’t replace ground-based firefighting crews or other aircraft types, they offer benefits when used alongside other resources. Able to deploy rapidly and reach areas too remote or dangerous for human crews, firefighting drones will be a valuable tool for any emergency response team.
Oregon suffered over 2,000 wildfires in 2024, with 1.9 million acres burned, breaking the state record previously set in 2020.
A majority of these are caused by lightning strikes, which can happen in remote, hard-to-access areas. In these situations, it’s not always possible to deploy piloted aerial firefighters, particularly if visibility falls or high winds make flying conventional aircraft unsafe.
Although the study is very much at an exploratory stage, with no firm commitment to purchase the helicopters, hopes are high that it could lead to something more.
The remotely piloted helicopter that could one day fight fires
The Yamaha FAZER SAR (search and rescue) drone is a remotely piloted, two-bladed, conventional fuel-powered helicopter with a maximum take-off weight of 110 kg (244 lbs).
The vehicle has been designed as a longer-range, larger variant of the company’s FAZER R, which has seen widespread usage across a range of applications which including aerial crop dusting in Japan and other aerial surveillance roles.
Designed to carry mixed payloads from imaging equipment, spraying gear, or transporting medical supplies or humanitarian relief to remote areas, the type has also been deployed to the vineyards of California for pest control.
The Oregon Department of Aviation noted potential new opportunities under the recently released Part 108 proposals for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone operations.
The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) published its proposals on 5 August, setting out a new certification pathway for drone operators. The rule is open for comments for 60 days, but has already spurred some positive momentum in the drone delivery market.
Even before that, President Trump signed the Wildfire Management Technology Act into law as Section 1114 in 2019. This bill aimed to “develop consistent protocols and plans for the use of wildland fires of uncrewed aircraft system technologies, including for the development of real-time maps of the location of wildland fires.”
Crewed or uncrewed, aerial firefighting needs new platforms
The whole aerial firefighting landscape is currently in a state of flux, not just with uncrewed systems but with more traditional aircraft designs being considered, too. While Canadair has largely been the dominant force in this arena for many years, other developers are now presenting new concepts that may take the lead in the future.
As reported by AeroTime, developers such as Belgian company Roadfour, which is working on an amphibious aircraft called ‘Seagle’, are just one contender, along with Bordeaux-based Hynaero, which signed a deal with Airbus in March 2025 to develop its Fregate-F100 firefighting aircraft, and Italy-based 19-01, which aims to have its clean-sheet amphibious aircraft in the market by 2030.
The newer under-development Canadair CL-515 will be able to drop up to seven tons (15,500lbs) of water or retardant, while the Seagle is due to have a capacity of around 12 tons (26,455lbs).
On the uncrewed side, various companies are developing suitable aerial vehicles for firefighting, although they face challenges in terms of the limited endurance and payload capacity of their designs.
While some advanced air mobility companies have touted firefighting versions of eVTOLs and uncrewed platforms, these are often more appropriate for tackling smaller urban fires rather than uncontained wildfires.
For example, Barcelona-based Singular Aircraft is targeting the forest firefighting market with its Flyox firefighting drone, which can carry up to 1.5 tons (3,310 lbs) of water or retardant. This is about half the capacity of a firefighting Air Tractor aircraft and just one-quarter of the water-carrying capacity of a Canadair CL-415.
The use case for drones in emergency response is clear
Drones are not entirely new to emergency response. Agencies across the US already deploy them for surveillance, using infrared cameras to spot hotspots, map fire perimeters in real time, and provide critical situational awareness in smoke or at night.
In the US, more than 1,500 police departments use drones for tasks ranging from accident reconstruction and search-and-rescue to crowd monitoring and SWAT support.
In China, emergency responders are testing drones for direct response, releasing a video of drones with fire hoses tacking a blaze in a high-rise.
While these are generally small, quadcopter-type drones, some emergency agencies are already experimenting with larger, fuel-powered or military-derived drones for wildfire and disaster response.
The US Forest Service and Department of the Interior have deployed ScanEagle fixed-wing UAVs, originally designed for the military, to map fire perimeters when smoke grounded piloted aircraft.
NASA has also flown its Ikhana drone — a civil variant of the Predator B — over California wildfires, collecting thermal imagery and data that ground crews could use in real time.
In California, CAL FIRE has trialled larger rotary-wing drones for night fire mapping, while agencies in Canada and Australia are testing heavy-lift platforms that can carry water, hoses or supplies into areas too dangerous for crewed aircraft.
As wildfires grow more destructive, no single technology will provide the answer. The future of aerial firefighting is likely to be hybrid: large water-bombing aircraft delivering bulk drops, complemented by drones that can scout, map and operate in conditions too dangerous for crews.
Oregon’s study may only be exploratory, but it signals how uncrewed aircraft could become a permanent fixture in the fight against fire — not to replace human firefighters, but to keep them safer and give them better tools in an increasingly hostile environment.
