I am a bit late in writing about the status of the U.S. Forest Service's contracts for "Legacy" Airtankers. The U.S. Forest Service announced these contract awards on Wednesday, March 27. At the time that I first read about this contract award, I was a bit preoccupied with the death of Jeffrey Scheuerer and after that the start of the spring wildfire season here in New Jersey. With some rain on Wednesday night and again today provides the opportunity to write about this contract.
The recently announced "Legacy" Airtanker contract awards contracts to MInden Air for one Lockheed P2-V (T-48) and to Neptune Aviation for six Lockheed P2-V and one BAe-146-200. I take it that the term "Legacy" is referring to the Lockheed P2-V tankers as they have been around for quite a few years by now.
As I recall, I first learned of the Legacy Airtanker contract award through Walt Darran's post on the Associated Aerial Firefighters website in their news and articles section in an article that may be found here. Around the same time, I read Bill Gabbert's writeup on the Legacy Airtanker award on his Fire Aviation Site in an article dated March 28th. Bill has a good summary of this contract and related issues so you might want to check it out.
Last year at this time, I found a listing the tankers (P2-V and BAe-146) under contract in 2012. I have not seen such a list for this year, and if and when I do, I'll post the list here as I did last year. Nor do I know the status of the DC-10 tankers or if the US Forest Service will ask for help from our friends in Canada as they did in 2011 and 2012. Finally, I don't know the status of the contracts for the next-generation tankers, I am hoping that these contract awards by the US Forest Service are announced and awarded soon because we need them. Hopefully I will be able to report back here on positive news about the availability of some of these tankers. We sure need them. In the meantime, stay safe!
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