Five autonomous drones worked together on July 15 to spray between 500 and 1,000 gallons of firefighting foam during a field test organized by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as CAL FIRE. The demonstration took place with support from the nonprofit FireWERX and the California-based company Seneca, which is making its Argo-1 drones commercially available starting in 2026.
According to a report by Ars Technica, the tests are part of a broader push to see whether drones can help firefighting crews respond faster to small fires and stop them before they grow. That question has taken on new urgency as climate change has extended what was once a defined fire season into a nearly year-round risk across much of the United States. Similar tests have also been conducted in Alaska this summer.
Drones cannot replace large airtankers. Most are significantly smaller, carry far less payload, and have shorter flight ranges. But the argument for them is speed and flexibility in the early stages of a fire. Getting water or retardant on a small fire quickly can prevent it from becoming a much larger and more destructive one.
Each Seneca Argo-1 drone can carry about 100 pounds of water or fire retardant. The drones are designed to operate in swarms of four to six. Once a human operator uploads a GPS waypoint, the autonomous drones fly to the target area and use onboard sensors to detect a fire's heat signature. They then determine the best hovering altitude before lining up to spray the fire one after another.
The drones are not without limitations. Fully loaded, each one is limited to a round trip of about 10 miles while flying at roughly 30 miles per hour on average. That means they would need to be prepositioned in fire-prone areas ahead of time, or transported by ground vehicle when a fire breaks out. Logistics, in other words, remain a real constraint.
Portability, though, is one of their strengths. Each drone fits in the back of a pickup truck with the tailgate down. Two people can manually carry an empty drone without equipment. That makes them easier to stage in rural and remote areas than larger aircraft.
The tests are also connected to a larger competitive effort. Organizers of the $11 million XPRIZE competition are testing whether drones can make a meaningful contribution to wildfire response, which adds a financial incentive on top of the operational ones driving fire agencies toward the technology.