We Keep seeing more and more forest fires every year.
"Over the last few decades, wildfire costs have increased as a percent of the Forest Service’s budget as fire seasons have grown longer and more costly. The projected continued growth in the 10-year average cost of fire suppression through 2025 is rising to nearly $1.8 billion."

http://www.fs.fed.us/sites/default/files/2015-Fire-Budget-Report.pdf

Without even considering property damage and loss of life, just on the basis of the tax burden on the American public we could and should be saving the forest service millions possibly hundreds millions of dollars every year by simply using the satellite technology we already have.
(eg. Landsat satellites Track Yellowstone's Underground Heat )
We can monitor ground temperatures in our forests so we can dispatch fire fighting aircraft to contain small fires before they get out of hand.

The 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group located at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona contains over 4400 aircraft. http://www.dm.af.mil/Units/309AMARG.aspx
I am certain there are several decommissioned Aircraft that could be inexpensively retrofit to fight forest fires.

Why aren't we doing this?