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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.

A digital tablet showing a top-down view of a water drop over a fire on the left and a map with flight path details on the right.

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.

  • Image of smoke in the distance of a hilly landscape, with an orange 'detection' box around the smoke.

    Fire is detected early


    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.

  • A Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter carries a Bambi Bucket in a pleasant blue sky.

    Rain-enabled aircraft respond


    Rain’s wildfire mission autonomy system perceives the fire, understands its behavior, size, direction of spread, and uses that information to design a suppression strategy.

  • A Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter with assistive autonomy deploys water.

    Fire is contained


    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.

What fire agency leaders are saying

“Rain’s autonomous wildfire suppression technology will give every community the opportunity to stop wildfires before they grow out of control.”
— Chief Brian Fennessy, Orange County Fire Authority, FIRESCOPE Chair
“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 by helping us advance low intensity fire when and where we need it.”
— Kate Dargan Marquis, former State Fire Marshal
“Rain is creating a more efficient wildfire response framework that ultimately saves lives, property and our natural ecosystems.”
— Christopher Anthony, Former CAL FIRE Chief Deputy Director
“Autonomous aircraft—both crewed and uncrewed—can increase flexibility and capacity for on-the-ground incident commanders, ultimately saving lives and property for the communities we serve. Rain is at the forefront of this exciting firefighting evolution.”
— Chief Dan Munsey, Chairperson, International Association of Fire Chiefs Technology Council

Built with Fire Professionals

We are solving our own problem. Our team has worked alongside fire professionals since day one to build a system that works every time. We have personal experience with catastrophic wildfire.

Updates

  • A helicopter is dropping water on a small fire in a grassy field with mountains in the background.

    Rain and Sikorsky show autonomous wildfire suppression over live fire in California

    Rain and Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company, have demonstrated autonomous wildfire suppression technology in a representative wildfire environment for the first time in California. Over the course of two weeks the companies completed several firsts including: First demonstrated communication interoperability of an autonomous aircraft with a human-piloted helicopter in the same Fire Traffic Area, supervised by an Orange County Fire Authority air tactical group supervisor aircraft (HLCO).

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  • Rain + Brothers Air Support: Teaming Up to Tackle Wildfires

    We’re excited to announce a new partnership with Brothers Air Support, a private Black Hawk firefighting operator, to equip their helicopter with Rain’s wildfire perception system. This collaboration marks a major milestone for Rain—it's the first time our system is being integrated with a private firefighting aircraft.scription goes here

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  • A group of people watching a helicopter conducting a water drop exercise over a large open area with trees in the background.

    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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  • 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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  • 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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