The Wikipedia article does not really explain what this airplane does. Came out of Eugene airport and flew seemingly east of the main part of both fires at a higher altitude. I assume some kind of sensor mission?
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this off InciWeb:
One RC-26 aircraft with Distributed Real-Time Infrared (DRTI) capability and support personnel from the 141st
Air Refueling Wing (Washington Air National Guard) have been deployed to Fairchild, WA. One RC-26 aircraft
with Distributed Real-Time Infrared (DRTI) capability and support personnel from the 162nd Operations Group
(Arizona Air National Guard) have been deployed to Eugene, OR in support of wildland fire operations. Also
supporting these aircraft are eight ground controllers from multiple U.S. Air National Guard squadrons.
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Probably the DRTI bird:
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I have seen these over fires at night before during the 2020 LNU lighting complex
DRTI on the ground with CAL-FIRE using ATAK for situational awareness with real time georeferenced video off the aircraft over the ops map.
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I worked with these guys during one of the earlier Paradise multi Structure fire losses from a wildland interface fire fight. Helped get them DOD guys video downlink and voice two-way setup on 148 Mhz channel. Used also a UAV at same fire. Think it might have been 2008 Butte complex. It might have had a different DOD name tagged to it then.
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Here is a good facebook Video Link on DRTI and what they bring to the fight. They use ATAK for this mission. Glad to see the USFS moving forward with ATAK.
We could be doing the exact same thing that DRTI does with our agency/contract aviation fixed wing and UAS. IMHO we should be doing this mission as fire folks. Lets learn from their best practices. We should be self reliant and the military should augment us just like they do with MAFFS and helicopters etc.
Please watch this video its very informative on capability.
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