The figures, only in Spain, leave no room for doubt: in 2025, The fire has devastated more than 354,000 hectares in the country (more than 350,000 football fields) and forced the evacuation of more than 30,000 people. And climate change increases the chances of future fires by up to 40 times.
It is obvious that the more and better tools we have to fight the fires of the future, the better. And, taking into account that this is not something exclusive to Spain, or even to Europe, the concern is obvious and logical. With this in mind, two companies have joined forces to develop an automated aerial platform, yes, droneswhich can help combat large-scale forest fires.
The new collaboration seeks to integrate Korean Air’s unmanned systems with Anduril’s comprehensive forest fire response platform. The plan is to manage the entire forest fire response cycle with minimal human intervention.
“Wildfires are a global crisis, but the way we fight them is terribly outdated – says Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril Industries, in a statement -. By integrating KAL UAVs into Anduril’s wildfire response platform, we will dramatically accelerate the response to forest fires, making it more automatedcomprehensive and scalable, which will ultimately save countless lives and billions in property damage.”
The collaboration claims that the solution will manage the entire wildfire response cycle with minimal human intervention. Covering a range of Anduril products, including the Fury autonomous aerial vehicle (AAV), and with Anduril’s Lattice software platformAnduril’s wildfire response platform unifies detection data from sensors distributed across air, ground, space and more into a single common operational picture to alert the operator as soon as a fire breaks out.
The operator can then task Anduril’s KAL AAVs and UAVs to autonomously assess the magnitude and status of the fire, before subsequently assigning Additional rapid response UAV or manned air tankers for fire suppressionas necessary.
“This collaboration applies Korean Air’s core expertise in unmanned systems to a critical global challenge – adds the statement -. Our goal is provide first responders with a crucial technological advantage to save lives and property from forest fires.”
By integrating Korean Air’s unmanned systems, as well as new systems jointly developed by Korean Air and Anduril, into Lattice, the companies hope to give a qualitative leap in traditional response models that are based exclusively on human visual detectionwhich can cause critical delays during the initial response.
Korean Air highlighted that is researching unmanned aerial vehicles, focusing on improving overall stealth aircraft technologiesas well as structural technologies to optimize performance in low visibility conditions.
The idea is to use unmanned vehicles, on the ground and in the air, not only to provide information to those responsible for the extinction. They would also serve to create firebreaks, rescue victims, collaborate directly with extinction by bringing water (by air) or chemicals and create scenarios in seconds (thanks to having all the information) to know what the best strategy is.