Autonomous aircraft for wildfire response
Rain adapts military and civil autonomous aircraft with the intelligence to perceive, understand, and suppress wildfires.
Our technology equips fire agencies with a new layer of safety for human-piloted missions, and enables efficient command of a network of uncrewed aircraft prepositioned in remote areas to reduce response time.
This simulation combines fire propagation and fire suppression modeling to determine how many aircraft are required to contain or slow an ignition before it reaches its inflection point.
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Fire is detected early
Regional early wildfire detection sensors, including fire watch cameras, smoke sensors, lightning detectors, and satellites, identify the general coordinates of a suspected wildfire ignition. With over 1,100 early fire watch cameras in California and more across the American West, many regions recognize the growing threat of wildfire and have already invested in early detection.
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Rain-enabled aircraft respond
A nearby Rain-equipped autonomous helicopter launches and flies to the coordinates relayed by the early detection sensors. As the first autonomous aircraft approaches a suspected ignition, Rain technology perceives the fire, understands its behavior, size, direction of spread, then uses that information to design a suppression strategy.
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Fire is contained
Software on Rain aircraft use thermal cameras and computer vision to precisely deploy fire retardant, while Rain’s wildfire intelligence system builds a strategy that considers subsequent responding aircraft, incorporating their resources and arrival times into an optimal suppression strategy. Ground crews ensure complete fire suppression.
Built with Fire Professionals
We are solving our own problem.
Our team, which includes former Incident Commanders, EMTs, and Search & Rescue members, has worked alongside fire professionals since day one to build a system that works every time. We have personal experience with catastrophic wildfire and are solving our own problem.
What leaders are saying
We sat down at our HQ with fire luminaries Chief Brian Fennessy and Chief Kate Dargan Marquis to ask what they thought about our work to enable autonomous aircraft to rapidly respond to wildfires when they are still small, before they grow out of control.
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Chief Brian Fennessy, Orange County Fire Department, Chair of FIRESCOPE and recently named International Fire Chief of the Year
“Reducing wildfire response time has always been our primary goal. With three aircraft staffed 24/7/365, our Quick Reaction Force program in the greater Los Angeles area has already saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by responding to ignitions quickly. Rain’s autonomous wildfire suppression technology will give every community the opportunity to stop wildfires before they grow out of control.”
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Chief Kate Dargan Marquis, former California State Fire Marshal & former White House Assistant Director of Disaster Preparedness and Response
“The paradox of wildfire today is that we need much more low intensity, healthy fire and less high intensity, damaging fire. Rain succeeds for both of these goals by making it easier to control damaging fires in new ways, and also by helping us advance low intensity fire when and where we need it. Rain has a unique vision and role in our fire future.”
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Chief Dan Munsey Chairperson, International Association of Fire Chiefs Technology Council
“It is clear that autonomous uncrewed aircraft are critical to the future of wildland firefighting response. Keeping fires small using water dropping drones and using drones to map fire perimeters are two examples of how uncrewed aerial systems allow our firefighters to respond and safely control fires before they can grow uncontrollable. Rain is at the forefront of this exciting wildland firefighting evolution.”
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Rain and Sikorsky Demonstrate Autonomy to Rapidly Find and Suppress Test Fires
Government, firefighting agencies, and investment representatives convened with Rain and Sikorsky to observe autonomous aerial water drops.
Rain and Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company, successfully demonstrated how an autonomous Black Hawk® helicopter can be commanded to take off, identify the location and size of a small fire, and then accurately drop water to suppress the flames.
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![A Black Hawk helicopter drops water from a Bambi Bucket]()
Accounting for Wind
Rain validated a wind deviation model with Sikorsky’s optionally-piloted Black Hawk helicopter. Wind deviation is one part of our broader wildfire mission autonomy system to equip fire agencies with tools to stop wildfires before they grow out of control.
On the flight field behind Sikorsky headquarters, an optionally-piloted Black Hawk helicopter equipped with Rain’s software targets a test fire in a moderate breeze while our team watches from as far away as California. We were there with Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company, to validate our latest wind deviation model on their optionally-piloted UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter.
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The trifecta of innovation, policy & capital
Natural climate solutions to climate problems—a discussion with climate investor, Nancy Pfund, a champion of California's landmark clean energy agenda, Gayle Miller, and Rain's CEO, Maxwell Brodie.
Wildfire is increasingly recognized as a key driver—and result—of climate change, and it’s familiar to hear conversations about rapid wildfire response, fire intensity management and wildfire preparedness. An often-overlooked but essential part of solving for the changing frequency and intensity of wildfires is recognizing and promoting the role of climate policy in shaping how we move forward in the wildland-urban interface and our public lands.
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![An optionally-piloted Black Hawk helicopter flies toward a plume of smoke on the edge of a river at Sikorsky's headquarters in Stratford, CT.]()
An Update on our Collaboration with Sikorsky
Rain and Sikorsky demonstrate early detection and fast response to wildfires with an autonomous Black Hawk® helicopter, completing flight tests demonstrating how an autonomous helicopter can be quickly launched to suppress wildfires.
During the past few months, we often found ourselves on the flight field at Sikorsky headquarters in Stratford, Connecticut to jointly demonstrate autonomous fire suppression operations with a Bambi bucket suspended beneath Sikorsky’s optionally piloted Black Hawk aircraft.
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Rain and Sikorsky Collaborate to Advance Rapid Response Capabilities for Aerial Wildland Firefighting
We’re excited to announce our collaboration with Sikorsky today at the UP.Summit.
Together, Rain and Sikorsky will explore how Sikorsky’s MATRIX™ autonomy suite operating with Rain’s Wildfire Mission Autonomy System can launch uncrewed helicopters to drop water on wildfires within minutes of detection. This collaborative effort will use Rain's system to upload mission commands to Sikorsky’s Optionally Piloted BLACK HAWK helicopter with no crew on board.
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Rain Announces $9.7M in Seed Financing
Rain is working to Enable Rapid Wildfire Response with Prepositioned Autonomous Aircraft.
Today Rain has announced an oversubscribed seed round, supporting our work to provide fire agencies the ability to contain wildfires before they grow out of control with prepositioned autonomous aircraft. Earlier this year we closed $9.7 million in financing, led by DBL Partners, with participation from VoLo Earth Ventures, Kapor Capital, and Convective Capital.
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![Helicopter pilots conducting a remote pilot test]()
What if we could install fire sprinklers for the forest?
Rain flies remotely-dispatched Black Hawk helicopter, demonstrating goal of suppressing fires automatically from afar.
By Maxwell Brodie
The nascent stages of fire are a critical opportunity for quick, efficient fire suppression. Adapting to fire is increasingly a necessity as the frequency and severity of catastrophic wildfires rises.
