Aviation Week this week is featuring this story on attempts to convert a 747 freighter into the world's largest fire bomber. Able to drop 20,500 gallons of water or fire retardent in 10 seconds, it's capacity is equal to 8 "normal-sized" air tankers. While the concept seems to work, there are still a very large number of regulatory hoops to jump through before the aircraft can see service.

The small cover picture featured with the article doesn't do this thing justice... it's huge.