While at the Aerial Firefighting conference in San Diego this week we had a chance to talk with Carrick Detweiler, the CEO and co-founder of Drone Amplified, the developer of the IGNIS prescribed fire system currently being used by land management agencies.

Their system works with American-made drones and takes firefighter risk out of aerial ignition. Two helicopters have crashed while igniting prescribed fires from conventional helicopters, killing a total of three personnel. The incidents occurred in Mississippi in 2015 and Texas in 2019.

We reported in November that Drone Amplified and Parallel Flight Technologies received a $650,000 grant from the US Department of Agriculture to support further development of a large-scale Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) for prescribed fire. Parallel says their hybrid gas/electric UAS can carry 100 pounds for up to two hours, numbers that are much larger than battery operated drones. When paired with the upgraded aerial ignition payload under development which will hold and dispense 3,500 incendiary spheres, it will have eight times the payload carrying capacity of drones being used today, and ten times the flight duration.