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Earlier this week, in Sweden:

”a […] forest fire is located in an old firing range littered with unexploded military ordnance, making it hazardous even if fire crews could reach the area.“

So, they

”launched a flight of Gripen fighter bombers loaded with GBU-49 laser guided bombs. The Gripens dropped one bomb at an altitude of 9,800 feet. The bomb exploded on target, extinguishing flames up to 100 yards from the impact point”

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I am not sure bombing fires is cost effective or applicable in most cases.

It might just work in Sweden, which has a low population density, but the fires around Potsdam are in the Berlin vicinity - people would probably frown at bombings, even if the bombs used are laser-guided precision ordnance.

I’d want a thorough analysis of the probablility of failure, certainly. A 90% on-target rate would be just fine for a weapon of war but is probably bad for a firefighting tool.

Cost might be an issue... let alone the issue of leaving your own ordinance that fails to detonate.. .

It was a last resort action.

But I wonder why oxygen extracting bomb are not used more often.

Firefighters here (Netherlands) sometimes use them in old wooden houses. They are like grenates that extract all oxygen so the fire dies.

That seems like a much better idea, but I don't know anything about oxygen extraction.

Like some type of Halon grenade?

http://elidefire.com/products.htm?

That is strangely reminiscent of Larry Niven's "The Magic Goes Away."

We have nukes in California. Nuking fires might be worth a try.

That sounds a little like a stunt or limited to very specific circumstances.

It does, but actually oil well fires have been put out with explosives.

During the first USA-Iraq war Saddam Hussein's troops lit up several hundred oil wells as they withdrew from Kuwait. Some of these were extinguished with the help of explosives. The situation is not fully analogous though, since in the case of Sweden it was too dangerous to get even remotely close to the source of fire.

fight fire with fire

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