The government has been trying to get away from using big old ex-military aircraft as tankers for a while now. The highly-public crashes of some old USAF-surplus C-130As (the incident you mentioned among them) accelerated that, although there was actually a bit of a government scandal around the operator getting those 1950s-vintage Hercs.
What makes no sense to me is hearing that they’re going to be replacing those P-3s—anti-sub aircraft that were designed for low-level flight—with Convair 580s? Those are turboprop-converted Convair 340 twin-engined airliners that are probably older than the Orions! I’d feel safer doing fire attack in an Orion than in a CV-580.
}:-)4
Most of these fire tanker operations are run on a shoestring budget. The level of professionalism is that of a cowboy riding in to save the day.
These fire events are not a recent development, they happen every year like clockwork.
Small companies buy old military airplanes because they are cheap, pennies on the dollar for what newer planes would cost. Also, none of these aircraft are purpose built for fire suppression missions. They are heavily modified from their original design.
Purpose built fire suppression tankers are available new. But there is no way a company can equip their fleet with new aircraft and be bid competitive with these companies flying the old military planes. So what we end up is planes older than the Edsel flying very important missions .
Every time the Government tries to get a modern fire suppression fleet , they end up having to accept the status quo because there is a fire NOW!