On a rare overcast, late-summer day, Aspen Fire Protection District trucks and tents peppered a strip of grassy land off Highway 82. Several uniformed staff huddled around an iPad, watching volunteer firefighter John Hammarback control a massive drone.
This first-of-its-kind machine looks like a giant bug: it’s about 10 by 12 feet, can fly up to 20 miles empty, and is designed to work in a swarm.
Hammarback guided one drone off the ground, flew it a few hundred feet north, then released a stream of water — part of a training session for Aspen Fire staff.
California-based company Seneca developed the drones and has tested them on prescribed burns. But when Aspen Fire officially launches its new drone program, as early as next year, it’ll be the first fire department in the world to operate these AI-supported firefighting drones independently.
Together, five drones can hold 500 to 1,000 gallons of finished fire foam. Hammarback and other Aspen firefighters say the system is really easy to use.
“It's pretty self-flying," Hammarback said. “You're just telling it where to go, and it will adjust accordingly. It's very user-friendly. If something is in its way, it will stop. It does a lot of the work for you.”
Aspen Fire Deputy Chief Andy Fisher joked that his 12-year-old could fly the drones. Fisher is in charge of launching the department’s drone program and believes this new venture is one prong of Aspen Fire’s strategy to innovate their way “out of a wildfire problem.”
Ideal use case
Aspen’s fire district is covered in dense forests, and every summer, Aspen Fire worries that lightning strikes in remote areas will start fast-moving and uncontrollable wildfires.
Fisher wants to send drones ahead to those hard-to-reach fires before firefighters arrive.
“If we could get it quick, keep them small and attack them while they're smoldering instead of waiting for the wind to pick them up and turn them into 22-acre fires, I feel like that's the most ideal use case,” he said.
When the drones arrive at a fire, they use AI to calculate distance and wind speed, then release water or retardant at a specific angle and velocity.
Seneca Founder Stuart Landesberg said the drones can monitor incidents, extinguish lingering hot spots, or even carry tools to firefighters on the ground.
“You can think about it almost like a flying Waymo,” he said.
Landesberg said the drones won’t replace air tankers on big fires, but they could make aerial firefighting more accessible for departments that can’t afford or staff helicopter programs.
“We can be the next best thing at two orders of magnitude less cost,” he said.
Aspen Fire says it’ll pay about $500,000 annually over the next five years to test the drones — roughly $2.5 million total, supplied by private donors. Because of those outside resources, Aspen Fire can try new, experimental technology without burdening taxpayers.
Firefighters nationwide are watching Aspen, eager to see how it uses the drones and whether they’re effective.
Drone potential
In 2006, NASA used one of its drones to help California map the 40,000-acre Esperanza Fire — one of the country’s first high-profile cases of drones supporting wildland firefighting. The technology grew more popular for fire agencies after that, prompting Charles Werner to take notice.
A longtime firefighter in Virginia, who also served as a fire chief, Werner founded DRONERESPONDERS in 2019 to connect fire, police, and other emergency responders using drones in the line of duty. The company also conducts research and trains members to operate drones. Werner said, as far as he knows, Seneca is the only company creating firefighting drones on this scale.
He’s very optimistic about Seneca’s potential. Their drones can travel farther than many other models, drop retardant, and conduct firefighting operations at night when manned aircraft can’t.
“I think what we've seen from the very beginning is that the heavier lift drones — being able to carry some kind of suppressant was going to make the difference of being able to stop a fire from becoming catastrophic,” Werner said.
But the drones have only been tested on prescribed burns so far – not real wildfires. Werner worries they might not be big enough.
“I don't think the size of the drones that they have are going to be sufficient to effectively do what they want to accomplish,” Werner said.
According to Seneca’s founder Landesberg, there’s no “panacea” in firefighting technology, and their drones are just one tool to support firefighters.
Werner understands this model is the first step of a longer process, and he hopes the technology will evolve with more investments.
“It's the precursor to get there,” he said. “If you came in with a really huge drone right now, the FAA would go crazy.”
Aspen Fire secured a waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration in late October and plans to start using the drones on real fires as early as next year. The department is cleared to fly the drones up to 200 feet in Pitkin County with several restrictions. Firefighters can’t fly them over populated areas, and someone has to have eyes on the drones at all times. They can’t blindly send one over a ridgeline without someone perched on top of a mountain or on the other side.
But if the drones are useful, and Aspen’s team can operate them well, Aspen Fire could try to expand its waiver in the future to help with fires in other parts of the state.
