Wildland Fire

Fire intelligence when the incident needs it.

Night infrared mapping, hotspot detection, and perimeter products delivered to the incident management team the same shift.

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What we deliver

The same package every shift

Nothing for an incident to learn on a bad night, and nothing to convert before it is useful.

Heat perimeter, intense and scattered heat, and isolated heat points classed high, medium, and low, in the NIFS schema the incident's GIS specialist, the GISS, expects, carrying the IRWIN identifier
Mopup buffers at whatever distance the IC and operations set, 50 to 400 feet off the line depending on the fire, so heat inside the buffer reads as a task with an edge on it
Templated 11 by 17 map sheets, aerial and topo pairs, both operator logos, with a QR to the live data
File geodatabase and shapefile set, KMZ for Avenza, TAK, FireSync, and Field Maps, orthorectified IR GeoTIFF
UAS IR flight summary: aircraft, sensor, pilot, times, coverage, interpreted size, method
Hosted feature service the crew opens in Field Maps, Avenza, TAK, or FireSync at 0700

Templated 11 by 17 infrared map sheet for Fielder Mountain, August 2026: heat perimeter, classified heat, mopup buffer, both operator logos, scale bar, and QR code. — The 11 by 17 as it ships. Fielder Mountain, August 2026: heat perimeter, classified heat, mopup buffer, both operator logos, scale, and the QR to the live data.

Infrared map sheet for Woodrat Mountain on a topographic base: heat perimeter, intense and scattered heat, isolated heat sources, and the launch and recovery point. — Heat perimeter, intense and scattered heat, and isolated heat sources on the topo base, with the launch and recovery point marked.

Field Maps on a phone showing hundreds of classified heat points along a fire perimeter at East Evans Creek. — The KMZ on a phone in a field mapping app, sized for a phone in a truck.

A pilot in a yellow fire shirt setting the aircraft on the truck tailgate at dusk, the sky red with smoke.

Why a firefighter's drone company

This work comes from the fire side

Red carded, on the fire line since 2012, and an ODF Call When Needed resource since 2019. Certificate of Authorization experience in controlled airspace. We carry the incident tactical and air to air frequencies, deconflict with the ARTCC, and operate inside the TFR under 14 CFR 91.137 rather than around it.

Every map on this page is a Rogue Reconnaissance job.

FAA Part 107 remote pilot, certificated November 2016
Red carded wildland firefighter: FFT1, GISS, UASD
Administratively Determined resource, US Forest Service
Oregon Department of Forestry Call When Needed UAS resource since 2019
Certificate of Authorization holder, Class D and Class E2 airspace
SAM.gov registered federal contractor, UEI RUE6PBWSLAN6, CAGE 9DDE5
Insured remote pilots
Founder, UAS Wildland Fire Collaborative, a 501(c)(3)

The pipeline

Built here, then handed to the collaborative

A pilot's raw thermal export becomes an incident ready package in about five minutes. Orthorectified mosaic, heat classified from measured temperature, perimeter and isolated heat sources in the schema the GISS expects, the map sheets, and the flight summary. We designed and built that pipeline at Rogue Reconnaissance, on our own fires, because the alternative was handing a GISS a folder of images at four in the morning.

Then we gave it away. It runs at the UAS Wildland Fire Collaborative, the nonprofit we founded, so any pilot on any fire can hand the incident the same packet in the same schema. State, contractor, and district pilots use it now.

So there are two ways in. If you are a pilot or a program looking for the platform itself, that is the Collaborative. If you want us to fly your incident, that is this page.

Go to the Collaborative

How a shift works

When the aircraft leave for the night, we go to work

Flying at night is safer, the airspace is quiet, and heat signatures read cleaner against cooled ground.

01
Mobilize under Call When Needed

Resource order in hand, we coordinate with air operations, the IC, division supervisors, and the ARTCC before dark, and put the launch and recovery point in the layer.
02
Fly the night shift

After the incident's aircraft leave for the night we grid the division with a radiometric thermal camera, flown as a mapping mission. The duty period runs 1300 to 0800.
03
Process in the field

The imagery becomes an orthorectified thermal mosaic and heat is classified from measured temperature. The package builds in about five minutes.
04
Deliver before briefing

Map sheets, geodatabase, shapefiles, KMZ, and the flight summary go to the GISS and the IMT before the morning briefing, most nights by 0500.

Thermal map of a prescribed burn unit laid over the color imagery, hot spots marked across the unit. — Thermal map of a prescribed burn unit, one of the first products, years before the pipeline.

Who it is for

Fires that never get a crewed infrared flight

State agencies under Call When Needed agreements
Type 3 incidents and initial attack, where the first perimeter product comes off a tailgate
Prescribed fire planning, ignition documentation, and mortality mapping afterward
Post fire assessment for the mitigation work that follows

Smoke and inversion ground most aircraft. We can usually see through the inversion or fly under it, so the mapping still happens on the nights other platforms cannot fly at all.

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