FIRELINE-AIR: A Ground-Supplied, Hose-Fed Heavy-Lift Aerial Platform Concept for Wildfire Response

Hose-fed firefighting drones, aerial platforms supplied continuously with water or foam through a ground-connected hose, are commercially available today for high-rise structural firefighting. Drones used against wildfires, by contrast, operate almost exclusively in a cyclical pattern: fill, fly, drop, return. Continuous ground-supplied operation over vegetation fires has been demonstrated only at academic prototype scale. This note proposes the missing intersection: an operational mission concept that adapts the continuous-supply, hose-fed architecture to wildfire response, built around a heavy-lift multirotor, a mobile ground supply unit, and a deliberately narrow mission profile. The author claims no intellectual property and has no commercial expectation. The purpose of this note is to invite engineering scrutiny, and adoption by anyone in a position to build it.