Fire departments that have already embraced small drones to help fight wildfires could soon be getting bigger help.
several startups are developing a new generation of autonomous aerial vehicles that more closely resemble airplanes than the small quadcopters that currently dominate the consumer drone industry. The companies hope that advances in the technology can help them snuff out wildfires — sometimes even before they start.
Their efforts are taking on fresh urgency as historically devastating wildfires rage in Los Angeles, but they might face regulatory and logistical challenges before getting fully off the ground.
One company developing firefighting drones, the United Kingdom-based Windracers, is one of 29 teams that were selected to participate in an $11 million competition put on by XPRIZE, a nonprofit group that seeks to spur technological development. The company’s drones, which have already seen use in Ukraine to carry cargo, have a wingspan of 30 feet and can work in swarms to monitor large swaths of land for wildfires and drop flame suppressants.
A fire department in the U.K. tested Windracers’ drones last August, praising the speed of the drones’ response. The company built its drones to suppress a fire within 10 minutes, before it grows out of control. With existing methods, the response time can be hours.
“The difference in the size of the fire that you get as a result of that is measurable,” said Jonathon Waterford, who leads the design team at Windracers.
smaller drones have already taken on a role in firefighting. In 2017, the Los Angeles Fire Department bought four drones with an assortment of features, including cameras and infrared sensors to spot wildfires. When a brush fire broke out in New York City in November 2024, officials there used drones to guide firefighters to hot spots.
Most of the 21 units of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection now have drones, too, information officer scott McLean said.
“We continue to train people as we speak to be able to operate these,” he said. “The program is evolving and will continue to evolve as technology advances and is proven.”
The ongoing wildfires in California have underscored the challenges that fire departments and local infrastructure face as blazes become more fierce and more frequent in a warming climate. For now, some of the most effective tools in deployment are super scoopers — piloted aircraft that can suck up ocean water to dump on nearby blazes. But there are only about 160 operating worldwide, all built by the same Canadian company using riffs on a 55-year-old design.
Meanwhile, firefighters face rapidly mounting difficulties. As acres burn at a higher rate each year, they often work 12-16 hours per day, sometimes for over two weeks straight, to subdue large fires. since 2000, over 200 firefighters have died fighting wildfires; the leading cause of those deaths are aviation-related incidents.
Maxwell Brodie, the CEO of Rain Industries, which makes software that allows helicopters to suppress fires autonomously, said his technology could alleviate some of the risk firefighters face. Without a pilot, helicopters can get closer to flames, operate more accurately in higher winds and fly at night — when it’s usually dangerous for humans.
“Autonomy changes some of the risk calculus, because the risk is to equipment rather than to people,” he said.
Rain said it has carved a regulatory pathway for its technology and is optimistic it could field its helicopters as soon as this year. But many entrepreneurs are still proving their technology overcomes regulatory and logistical hurdles.
Frank Frievalt, the director of the Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Institute at Cal Poly and a former fire chief, said drones aren’t a “silver bullet” and can’t yet match humans’ situational awareness.
Frievalt works with Marc Horney, a grasslands specialist at Cal Poly who focuses on geospatial technology. The two have seen many companies pushing drones as wildfire-fighting solutions in recent years and found that integrating them in the field is no simple feat.
Horney said that’s because drones sometimes complicate an operation, making the job harder for firefighters on the ground.
“A primary obstacle limiting how and when you can fly these aircraft is going to be, who’s going to be in control of where those aircraft are, what they’re doing, how they’re interacting with the crewed aircraft also responding to the incident,” Horney said.
The Federal Aviation Administration regulates most things that enter U.s. airspace, including drones. The agency said it has a quick approval process for first responders and is working to make the regulatory process for drones quicker.
“The FAA continuously works to safely and efficiently integrate drones into our National Airspace system,” the agency said. “The FAA can use its existing performance-based regulations to certify autonomous aircraft capable of dispensing large amounts of water or fire retardant. Manufacturers of these aircraft must demonstrate their designs meet the FAA’s rigorous safety standards, and safety always determines the certification timeline.”
There are reasons to be cautious, said Jonathan Keller, the founder of BlackBee Robotics based in Blacksburg, Virginia, who works as a test engineer at Virginia Tech’s FAA-designated drone test site and develops custom drones on the weekends. Researchers at those test sites are slowly finding ways to operate drones that can automatically avoid each other.
But this level of coordination requires — and could divert — personnel and financial resources, which are often unavailable to smaller departments like those near Keller in Appalachia, he said.
Just last week, a drone made headlines for hitting a firefighting plane over the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles.
“Firefighting is a profession that is steeped in processes that have been iterated on for decades,” Keller said. “To throw a drone into the equation, that thing better be helping out rather than hindering.”
Drones that actively fight wildfires could still be years away, but those involved in their development are optimistic they’ll eventually see front-line action. Andrea santy, the director of XPRIZE Wildfire, whose autonomous aircraft competition is slated to end in 2026, said many of the teams are already testing technology that could soon be ready for action.
“As we start to look at what the future looks like, I do feel really fortunate and inspired by what the teams are developing and the potential to be able to respond to fires before they become destructive,” santy said.
CORRECTION (Jan. 15, 2025, 4:20 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article mischaracterized Rain Industries’ software. It lets helicopters suppress fires autonomously, not fly autonomously.