Drones capable of spraying water and fire retardants have been practicing how to snuff out wildfires early in California and Alaska this summer, demonstrating a possible rapid-response tool for firefighting as climate change transforms wildfire season into a nearly year-round risk for much of the United States.

Most drones are significantly smaller than crewed aircraft and have shorter flight ranges, meaning they cannot replace large airtankers in delivering massive payloads of water or other fire-suppressing payloads to remote wildfires. But companies and fire agencies, along with organizers of the $11 million XPRIZE competition, are testing whether drones can help firefighting crews respond more quickly to small fires and put them out before they become more destructive.

Key facts

• The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) ran a field test on July 15 involving five autonomous drones that worked together to deploy between 500 and 1,000 gallons of foam for suppressing fires.
• Each of Seneca's Argo-1 drones can carry about 100 pounds of water or fire retardant and operate in swarms of four to six drones.
• Fully loaded Argo-1 drones are limited to a 10-mile round trip while flying at about 30 mph on average, so they may need to be prepositioned in fire-prone areas or transported by ground vehicle.
• Dryad Networks' Silvaguard autonomous firefighting drone system completed final testing in the XPRIZE Wildfire competition near Fairbanks, Alaska in June 2026.
• The Aspen Fire Protection District in Colorado has committed to a $5 million contract to deploy five Seneca drones over five years.

Seneca's Argo-1 drone swarm

CAL FIRE ran its own field test involving five autonomous drones that worked together to deploy between 500 and 1,000 gallons of foam combined for suppressing fires on July 15. The demonstration was organized with the help of the nonprofit FireWERX and the California-based company Seneca, which is making the drones commercially available starting in 2026.

Each of Seneca's Argo-1 drones can carry about 100 pounds of water or fire retardant while working together in swarms of four to six drones. Once a human operator uploads a GPS waypoint, the autonomous drones fly toward their target and use onboard sensors to spot the heat signature of a fire. The drones then find the best hovering altitude before each lining up to spray the fire, one after the other.

The fully loaded drones are limited to a round trip of 10 miles while flying at about 30 miles per hour on average, which means they would ideally need to be prepositioned in fire-prone areas or first transported by ground vehicle. But each drone can fit in the back of a pickup truck with the tailgate down, and two people can even manually carry the empty drones.

Seneca says the goal is to enable firefighters to refill a returning drone's payload and swap in a fresh battery so that it's ready to fly again in two minutes. The company previously demonstrated its drone technology for San Bernardino County Fire in December 2025.

Testing in the Alaskan wilderness

Separately, the XPRIZE Wildfire competition gave another firefighting drone system its own trial by fire in finals testing just outside of Fairbanks, Alaska in June 2026. The Silvaguard autonomous firefighting drone system, developed by the German company Dryad Networks, worked with Dryad's Silvanet wildfire detection network to autonomously detect and suppress a wildfire within the competition's 1,000 square kilometer test area.

Dryad's detection system consists of solar-powered sensors attached to trees that are designed to detect the smoke from a smoldering fire. When a sensor triggers the alarm via a wireless mesh network to an Internet-connected border gateway device, a prepositioned Silvaguard observation drone launches to confirm and geolocate the fire using infrared and optical imaging sensors, while also ensuring that it's not a false alarm.

That sets the stage for a Silvaguard suppression drone to take off and deploy up to 26 gallons of fire suppressant onto the fire. The drones can be prepositioned inside solar-powered, spherical hangar pods.

Why wildfire seasons are getting longer

The urgency behind these efforts comes from a changing fire landscape. Wildfire season in the United States is no longer confined to a few summer months. Warmer spring temperatures, earlier snowmelt, prolonged drought, and an abundance of dry grasses and underbrush have extended the period of dangerous fire weather in many western states. Some regions now see major fires in late fall and even winter, when powerful downslope winds can drive flames through dry vegetation.

Federal agencies and state firefighting departments have responded by investing in more aircraft, better detection networks, and new tools to attack fires while they are still small. Drones are attractive because they can be stationed close to high-risk areas and launched without a pilot on board, potentially reducing response times from tens of minutes to just a few minutes.

The limitations of firefighting drones

For all their promise, drones still face significant constraints. A single small drone can carry nowhere near the amount of water or retardant that a crewed airtanker can deliver. They also have limited endurance, often constrained by battery capacity, and they must operate within radio control range or rely on sophisticated autonomous navigation and communication systems. Weather, wind, and regulatory restrictions can also limit where and when drones can fly.

The 10-mile round trip range of Seneca's Argo-1 is adequate for fires close to a staging area, but not for blazes in remote wilderness. That is why the company envisions prepositioning drones in fire-prone areas or carrying them by ground vehicle. Even with those limits, advocates argue that the ability to hit a fire with water or retardant in its first minutes can prevent it from growing into a major incident. Most large fires start small, and early suppression is often the most cost-effective way to reduce damage.

A growing market and early customers

The ultimate test for whether Dryad's system or Seneca's drones can nip fires in the bud will come if fire agencies deploy them during the lengthening wildfire season. The Aspen Fire Protection District in Colorado has become an early customer by already committing to a $5 million contract for deploying five of Seneca's drones over five years. The district, which serves communities in the Rocky Mountains, sees drones as a way to supplement its existing firefighting resources and reach fires in steep terrain quickly.

CAL FIRE has not signed up any firefighting drones just yet, but it represents another large potential customer. The California fire agency already operates the world's largest aerial firefighting fleet with more than 70 crewed fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, along with using AI-powered camera networks and supporting development of the FireSat constellation designed to spot wildfires from space even faster.

Seneca and Dryad will likely face competition from other developers as interest in firefighting drones grows. Several technology companies are working on electric aircraft, hydrogen fuel cell systems, and other propulsion improvements that could extend flight endurance. Meanwhile, advances in machine learning are improving the ability of drones to distinguish between smoke, dust, birds, and other false alarms, making autonomous fire detection more reliable.

In Alaska, Dryad's system demonstrated that a network of smoke detectors and autonomous drones can work together from start to finish without a human needing to guide every step. In California, Seneca's swarm showed that multiple drones can coordinate over a fire and deliver a meaningful amount of suppressant in a short period. These are early steps, but they point toward a future in which unmanned aircraft regularly assist firefighters on the front lines of a year-round wildfire crisis.

Source: Ars Technica News