Parallel Flight's Firefly Heads Down Under as Fire Seasons Go Global
La Selva Beach's Parallel Flight Technologies has tapped Australia's Drone Forge to distribute its Firefly heavy-lift drone across Asia-Pacific, just as wildfire seasons grow longer, larger, and less predictable on both continents.
The sun sets. The air tankers land. The fire keeps burning. Fire historian Stephen Pyne calls our era the Pyrocene, an age when fire shapes the planet as much as ice once did. It explains why the hardest hours of any wildfire are the ones when crews have the fewest tools in the air.
Santa Cruz County's own "pickup truck of the sky" is going international. Parallel Flight Technologies announced a strategic distribution partnership with Drone Forge, an Australia-based uncrewed systems integrator, to bring its Firefly platform to the Asia-Pacific region, starting with Australia and its territories. Drone Forge will handle sales, customer integration and in-region operations, with plans to add authorized service, maintenance and training over time.
"We're seeing strong inbound interest from this region," said Parallel Flight CEO Craig Stevens. The timing is not a coincidence.
The numbers behind the demand
In the United States, wildfire has become a permanent line item. From 2021 through 2025, wildland fires burned 7.1 million acres in 2021, 7.6 million in 2022, 2.7 million in 2023, 8.9 million in 2024 and 5.1 million in 2025, roughly 31.5 million acres in five years, an area larger than Pennsylvania. And 2026 is running hot: more than 8.3 million acres had burned by early September, making it the nation's most destructive wildfire year by acreage in at least a decade.
Australia's picture is similar. The total area burnt in 2025 was 50 million hectares, 46% above the previous year and 14% above the 2000–2024 average. National mapping found 2025 was the second-largest fire year in the last decade, exceeded only by 2023. The current season opened with a jolt: on December 6, more than 50 fires burned simultaneously across New South Wales.
Fire season is now every season
Regions once defined by rainy seasons, snow seasons and hurricane seasons now have wildfire seasons too. Los Angeles burned in January 2025. Colorado's Marshall Fire tore through suburbs in December 2021. Maui's Lahaina fire was driven by winds from a passing hurricane. In Australia, CSIRO research shows fire seasons are getting longer and stretching into autumn and winter, with average winter burned area increasing five-fold.
Longer seasons mean crews need tools that keep working when people and crewed aircraft cannot.
A drone that doesn't clock out
Firefly's patented Parallel Hybrid Electric Multirotor propulsion delivers up to 100 lb of payload and up to 10x the endurance of all-electric drones, plus 2 kW of continuous power for onboard sensors. Because it refuels in minutes rather than recharging for hours, Firefly can rotate back into the air around the clock, hauling hose, water, medical supplies and equipment to fire lines or holding infrared eyes over a fire through the night, when crewed tankers are typically grounded. Firefighters get support 24 hours a day.
Firefly fits in the back of a pickup, is NDAA-compliant, made in the USA, and backed by ONR, DIU, USDA, NASA and NSF.
For Santa Cruz, this story comes full circle. Parallel Flight was born from local residents' firsthand experience with the 2020 wildfires that ravaged the Santa Cruz Mountains. Six years later, that hard-won idea is heading to the other side of the Pacific to help firefighters who face the same threat.
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