A US firefighting bureaucrat was questioned.

Canada accepted criticisms of the aircraft from a US Forest Service
report based on a half-day's demo held in the Farnborough, UK area in 1994.

A Canadian firefighting bureaucrat was also questioned. To your writer's knowledge, information, and belief, no firefighting bureaucrat from Canada has ever seen the IL-76 waterbomber perform, despite plenty of opportunity to do so.

Meanwhile, Ilyushin Aviation called some of the USFS report's written
observations and conclusions "unprofessional."

Meanwhile, a California firefighter says "If the (aircraft) is half
as good as (proponents) say it is, we should have it."

Meanwhile, the Aussies have said the Il-76 is a "very, very good
firefighting aircraft," appropriate in a mix of firefighting assists.

Meanwhile, there was Field Exercise "Bogorodsk 2002" in Noginsk,
Russian Federation 25-27 September 2002

http://www.nato.int/multi/photos/2002/m020925d.htm

Meanwhile, a US expert on Russian aviation says it's "almost
criminal" that the Il-76 has not been used against wildfire
while Colorado Springs' city manager says it's "a shame".

So, there is conflict on the face of the public record.

Will North American bureaucrats' objections survive or will North
Americans demand to see whether their bureaucrats are wrong based
on a half-day's demo?*

Who gets the benefit of the doubt now that 25 of 33 US (ageing)
large firefighting aircraft are out of service for safety reasons?

It has been reported another el Nino is forming in the
Pacific. Recall that the last el Nino resulted in a year
WWF-International called "the Year the Earth Burned"

No doubt that the Be-200 will be a wonderful
airplane in the many roles it can play, including
firefighting.

Some very small fraction of wildfires causes some very
large measure of wildfire damages and when large fires
happen, nothing short of very large liquids payloads are
most desirable.

Check the reasons for the development of North America's largest
waterbomber, the Martin-Mars here: http://www.vectorsite.net/avmars.html#m7

".existing aircraft types used as water bombers, such as Beavers, Otters, Avengers and so on, couldn't carry enough water to really dowse a fire."

Quote:
Calif. Fire Destroys Calif. Residences 6:51 a.m. ET
SHASTA LAKE, Calif. (AP) -- A fast-growing wildfire destroyed
at least 40 residences near the eastern edge of Shasta Lake,
forcing hundreds of people to flee the area.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Wildfires.html

As you may have noticed, one Wendell Shedd, of New
Hampshire, a State not known for its fire problems, rose
to defend his US Forest Service recently when Pravda
criticised the US administration for failing to bring on
the Il-76 waterbomber. In a widely publicised letter to
Pravda, Shedd reiterated USFS excuses for non-performance
on the Il-76 seen variously in US publications over the last
six (6) years.

The earliest is here, at the Christian Science Monitor, where
Jim Harrison, Santa Barbara County, Calif., fire battalion chief,
says:

Quote:
"Even if the plane's only> half as good as they
Russians he met in California> say it is, I'd have
it here this year."

http://csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/durableRedirect.pl

Shedd has perhaps not discovered that the very excuses he
wrote up are totally debunked by the statements of the
Forest Service whose failures to decide he likes to support
in this article from the Riverside California Press Enterprise:
http://www.fire.uni-freiburg.de/media/2003/news_20030905_us.htm

Wendell Shedd aside, this article begs the question:

Where is the 747 air tanker?

Is there or wll there ever be such an airtanker?