DETECTION BEFORE A FIRE BECOMES UNCONTROLLABLE

A joint Israeli project has completed the first flight test of an airborne wildfire detection system designed to identify and locate fires in real time within minutes of ignition. The partners are the Israeli Ministry of National Security, the Israel Innovation Authority, Israel Aerospace Industries, the Technion and the Israel Fire and Rescue Authority. The first test marks the beginning of a series of trials intended to evaluate the system across a range of operational scenarios and changing field conditions, with the objective of enabling emergency organisations to respond more quickly to fires across vast and remote areas.

The system’s stated performance is the substance of the announcement: coverage of hundreds of square kilometres from a single drone, detection within a few minutes of ignition, and location determination to metre-level accuracy from high altitude — at a stage before a fire develops into a large-scale wildfire that could become uncontrollable. That combination addresses the central problem in wildfire response, which is not suppression capability but detection latency. A fire located within minutes and to within metres can be reached by ground crews while it remains small; the same fire detected an hour later frequently cannot be.

THE PLATFORM AND THE SENSOR SUITE

The system is integrated onto IAI’s APUS 25, a tactical vertical take-off and landing drone capable of operating without a prepared runway, flying at high altitude and remaining airborne for extended periods. The platform is powered by an internal combustion engine rather than electric motors or batteries, which IAI states achieves significantly extended flight endurance — a design choice that matters for a persistent surveillance mission where time on station rather than acceleration or low noise is the governing requirement.

The payload combines day and night vision cameras with infrared capability, enabling detection of fire hotspots in darkness and penetration of dense smoke. Spectral image-processing algorithms and artificial intelligence analyse the imagery in real time to detect anomalies, identify fire outbreaks and extract precise location, with alerts transmitted immediately to the Israel Fire and Rescue Authority’s command and control centre. The infrared and smoke-penetration capabilities address the two conditions under which visual detection most commonly fails, and under which fires most commonly grow undetected.

OPERATING CONCEPT: A FIREFIGHTER DRAWS A POLYGON

The concept of operations has been deliberately simplified at the user end. The drone will be operated by a firefighter, who defines the search area by marking a polygon on a digital map. After take-off the aircraft operates autonomously, positioning itself at the optimal observation point and continuously scanning the designated area for four to five hours, providing responders with a real-time operational picture supporting decision-making, incident management and the deployment of firefighting resources. The design places no requirement on the operator to fly the aircraft, which is the condition under which uncrewed systems become practically deployable within emergency services rather than remaining specialist assets.

Yaron Schone, Head of the R&D Technology Department at the Israel Ministry of National Security, said the combination of drones, artificial intelligence and advanced data processing had the potential to enable earlier fire detection, improve situational awareness and shorten response times. Moshe Levy, Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Military Aircraft Group at IAI, said the project demonstrated the company’s ability to apply expertise in aviation, artificial intelligence and autonomous systems to an issue of national and global importance. Professor Asaf Schuster of the Technion’s Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science said the integration of the drone platform with the faculty’s expertise in algorithms and AI would enable authorities to respond more rapidly and at an earlier stage. Lieutenant General Eyal Caspi, Commissioner of the Israel Fire and Rescue Authority, said climate change and the increasing frequency of extreme weather events required the authority to develop future capabilities now, describing the collaboration as a first strategic step toward a smarter and more advanced fire and rescue service.