New Concept of Firefighting Aerial Support with Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Systems (AUAS)

The paper presents a new concept to supplement conventional firefighting aerial forces with the use of UAVs for swarm formation flying, coordination and quick turnaround times, with economically improved figures for cost per hour vs. amount of payload delivered in a given time frame. Given the high cost of operations and potential lack of qualified pilots, maintenance technicians and the need to address the logistics of the human resource chain far in advance, an unmanned option with less human related requirements is investigated.