Smoke Jumpers
I don’t understand why these suits are so big and slow – they don’t seem to be mounting anything that necessitates bringing such big suits
A basic PAL suit with a 2/3 movement profile and 2 points of fire resistant armour can use a variety of infantry scale equipment held in armoured gloves. They can even squeeze in the Extended Life Support and have very little to fear from a fire. This would be my generic firefighter as they’d be much less likely to disturb their environment and operate with minimum disruption inside buildings and tight spaces.
A Light BA could match the 2/3 movement profile and have 5 points of fire resistant armour while carrying over 300KG of mission equipment – effectively giving you a “mule” that could carry extinguishers, axes, sensors, lights, explosives and other tools for the lighter PAL suits. These would be more useful in the wildfire units as the BA might range further from their Tender unit (such as being dropped by VTOL) then an urban team does.
Parafoil makes no sense in this context – VTOL can insert close to target, jump jets can offer great mobility, other vehicles can improve long distance speed, a slow, stealthy gliding aerial approach just isn’t required.
D17
I’m no expert in firefighting but water is really useful – this 40T tracked vehicle carries just 1T of water (a modern response vehicle is a 12T wheeled vehicle carrying around 2T) – honestly, 9T of battle armour is less useful than 7T more of water and a few guys in unpowered armour for every scenario I can see this vehicle possibly responding to. Similarly, 5T of cargo could easily be 1T of cargo – I’m not sure what you’d want to carry in here that would be more useful than water/foam but 5T of chainsaws, explosives, power packs and sensors aren’t actually much more helpful than 1T (and if every light suit has 300KG of equipment how much more does the Tender need) – also, a fluid suction system would allow you to quickly refill the water from a source and upgrading the sprayer to a fluid gun would substantially improve output and range.
Hotshot
A rapid deployment and support platform for the BA is good but I’m not sure how much a VTOL spraying just 1T of water would do against a wildfire. Personally I would turn this into a search and rescue platform, put paramedic equipment, remote sensor dispenser and some basic cargo space in place of the liquid system and use it for getting BA in and civilians out.
A dedicated firefighting VTOL could tote substantial quantities of liquid through fluid guns and fluid suction systems. This could be based on the Hotshot chassis but carry 6 tons of fluid at the cost of the BA compartment.