Sep 3, 2026 · 48 min · 10 segments
On this episode of **All Things Wildfire**, OP sits down with **Stuart Landesberg, Founder and CEO of Seneca**, to explore how autonomous firefighting aircraft could change wildfire initial attack…
Stuart LandesbergGuestOPHostthere are a lot of gaps that we think of.
Yeah.
So nighttime, you guys are flying 100 percent.
That's it's a no brainer for you guys.
That's happening.
So we fly entirely over the internet, right? There's no, there's no like joysticks if you think about a traditional drone.
It's a, it's an iPad app is the best sort of interface, but you could use it in your phone.
Um, And, you know, the aircraft flies with GPS and then LIDAR for redundant obstacle avoidance.
And you fly a little more slowly at night because you don't have the RGB camera for sort of like triple redundant obstacle avoidance.
the airtime?
How much time can they be in the air? With full payload, I mean, look, it of course depends on are you flying uphill, are you flying downhill, the wind and elevation and heat, whatever.
But you can think about it as sort of 20 minutes fully loaded, flying 30 to 50 miles an hour.
And, you know, 40 minutes plus if you're flying sort of a reconnaissance mission or you're doing any number of mission profiles where you wouldn't have a couple hundred pounds attached to it.
Got it.
Okay.
So sort of like you have an ignition.
Does one of the aircraft get deployed or do they all get deployed at the same time? And if one aircraft gets deployed, you said it communicates back to the next one, right? And it kind of talks about like what it actually just did, where some potential vulnerabilities are still existing.
there are a lot of gaps that we think of.
Yeah.
So nighttime, you guys are flying 100 percent.
That's it's a no brainer for you guys.
That's happening.
So we fly entirely over the internet, right? There's no, there's no like joysticks if you think about a traditional drone.
It's a, it's an iPad app is the best sort of interface, but you could use it in your phone.
Um, And, you know, the aircraft flies with GPS and then LIDAR for redundant obstacle avoidance.
And you fly a little more slowly at night because you don't have the RGB camera for sort of like triple redundant obstacle avoidance.
the airtime?
How much time can they be in the air? With full payload, I mean, look, it of course depends on are you flying uphill, are you flying downhill, the wind and elevation and heat, whatever.
But you can think about it as sort of 20 minutes fully loaded, flying 30 to 50 miles an hour.
And, you know, 40 minutes plus if you're flying sort of a reconnaissance mission or you're doing any number of mission profiles where you wouldn't have a couple hundred pounds attached to it.
Got it.
Okay.
So sort of like you have an ignition.
Does one of the aircraft get deployed or do they all get deployed at the same time? And if one aircraft gets deployed, you said it communicates back to the next one, right? And it kind of talks about like what it actually just did, where some potential vulnerabilities are still existing.
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