Sponsors (8)
The bill pays federal attention and modest new funding to improve wildfire forecasting, coordination, and smoke response—benefiting public safety, emergency managers, and researchers—while creating new federal costs, procurement and privacy risks, and implementation gaps if matching resources or authorities are not provided.
Communities at risk (rural, urban, and Tribal) will get more accurate wildfire forecasts and earlier warnings, reducing loss of life and property through improved forecasting, monitoring, and alerting.
Local and State emergency managers, utilities, and wildfire managers will gain higher-resolution observations, smoke-dispersion forecasts, and other operational tools that improve evacuation planning and protection of critical infrastructure.
Federal, State, Tribal, and local agencies will have clearer coordination through a strategic plan, standardized communication protocols, and GAO/OSTP oversight, which can improve response timeliness and cross‑agency implementation.
Taxpayers and federal budgets will face increased costs from new program authorizations, testbed funding, UAS pilots, staffing changes, and standards implementation.
Federal recommendations, plans, and assessments risk being largely aspirational if Congress does not provide matching appropriations or authorities, meaning local capabilities may not improve despite new strategies.
Procurement and operational burdens could rise: restrictions on sourcing certain foreign-made UAS, limits on cooperative-institute participation, and new equipment or standards may raise costs or delay deployments for agencies and smaller local/Tribal departments.
Based on analysis of 8 sections of legislative text.
Creates a NOAA-led program, interagency committee, advisory body, a funded fire-weather testbed, NIST communications research, and an NWS IMET workforce roadmap to improve wildfire forecasting and communications.
Introduced June 23, 2025 by Jeff Crank · Last progress June 23, 2025
Creates a coordinated federal effort to improve wildfire forecasting, detection, monitoring, communications, and related tools by directing NOAA to run a new fire-weather Program and testbed, establishing an OSTP-chaired interagency coordinating committee and a nonfederal advisory committee, funding a multi-year testbed, directing NIST to research public-safety communications for wildland firefighting, and requiring an assessment and roadmap for National Weather Service incident meteorologist staffing and training. The measure defines key terms for “fire weather” and “fire environment,” sets timelines for committee formation and planning, and authorizes modest dedicated funding for a testbed over FY2026–FY2029. The goal is to accelerate operational use of new sensors, models, and communications, improve smoke and fire-behavior forecasting, strengthen interagency and cross-sector coordination (including states, tribes, academia, and private industry), and address workforce and interoperability gaps for wildfire response and community protection.