If you’ve been watching coverage of the northern Minnesota wildfires the past few days, you’ve probably seen them – low-flying aircraft making pass after pass over lakes near the fire, with trailing plumes of water.

People have been asking: what are those planes, and what are they actually doing?

Here’s the answer. Rapid initial attack.

In wildland firefighting, there’s a concept called rapid initial attack. The idea is straightforward: the earlier you get water or retardant on a fire, the less fire you have to fight. Research on aerial firefighting effectiveness consistently shows that rapid, well-coordinated aerial response limits fire growth during the initial response period – and that every minute of delay in extreme conditions changes the math significantly.

The Flanders Fire near Crosslake grew from a report to over 600 acres in a matter of hours on Saturday, May 16. By Sunday it had crossed nearly 2,000 acres. A peacetime emergency declaration followed. The aircraft working these fires aren’t for show, they’re the difference between a fire that gets contained early and one that doesn’t.

Social media footage shows people getting video of these aircraft – Air Tractor 802s on floats, scooping water from nearby Minnesota lakes. These amphibious tankers pick up water directly from lakes near the fire rather than returning to a land-based tanker facility to reload. That distinction matters enormously. The aircraft can scoop up to 800 gallons of water in approximately 15 seconds, then be back on the fire in minutes. That means it can deliver up to 14,000 gallons per hour to a fire. The loop is relentless: water, fire edge, lake, repeat.

That tempo is what keeps fires from doubling.

The component doing the actual work

What you don’t see in the footage is the mechanism actually doing the work. The moment the aircraft contacts the water, its scoops – one on each of the two floats – deploy, taking on up to 800 gallons in approximately 15 seconds. The water is forced up through tubes on the underside of the plane and into the hopper that sits in the nose of the aircraft – directly in front of the pilot. This process creates a massive, sudden weight shift at speed, at low altitude, in conditions that are rarely clean. The float system controls water volume, aircraft handling, and how the plane glides along the water through all of it. Inside the fascinating exterior, there’s unglamorous hardware operating under brutal conditions, making the difference between a good scoop and a bad one.

What’s flying over Crow Wing County right now

One of the aircraft working the northern Minnesota wildfires this week is equipped with Heatwave floats, a composite scooping float system for the Air Tractor 802, designed and manufactured by Momentum Aeronautics. Heatwave is certified by the FAA, validated by EASA (Europe), and approved by Brazil’s ANAC. It’s operated by Coastal Air Strike, flying under contract with the Minnesota DNR.

Heatwave was designed with pilot safety as the primary engineering constraint, not an afterthought. It features better water handling, improved operating margins during the scoop, and durable composite construction built for the real conditions pilots face: turbulence, wind, smoke, terrain, and the pressure of a fire that doesn’t stop growing while you’re on the water.

To the crews working these fires

To the pilots flying scoop runs, the ground crews building containment lines through the night, the incident commanders managing a dynamic and dangerous situation, thank you. What you’re doing is hard, dangerous, and it matters.

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Momentum Aeronautics is an aeronautical engineering company based in Minnesota. Heatwave is a composite scooping float system for the Air Tractor AT-802, certified by the FAA, EASA, and Brazil ANAC.