Immediate Impact: How real-time intelligence is empowering Korea wildfire response agency
- Overwatch Imaging
- Jul 20
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 27
In 2025, Overwatch Imaging partnered with South Korea-based OQ Solution to expand the availability of its mission-ready sensor autonomy technology across the Asia-Pacific region. As part of that effort, Korea Forest Aviation (KFA) invested in and deployed three Overwatch Imaging TK-8 Smart Sensors to upgrade its helicopter fleet and strengthen the nation's wildfire response capabilities with real-time airborne intelligence.
A year later, those systems have become an integral part of KFA's wildfire operations, supporting both daytime and nighttime missions with rapid mapping, multispectral intelligence, and onboard image processing.
In this Q&A, OQ Solution shares how KFA is using Overwatch Imaging's technology today, the operational challenges it addresses, and the real-world results the agency has achieved during its first season of response efforts with the new technology.
Can you give us a short update on how OQ Solution and KFA are deploying Overwatch Imaging’s system today?
Since the initial deployment of three TK-8 Smart Sensors, the systems have become valuable time-saving tools for Korea Forest Aviation (KFA). KFA operates the systems from its KUH helicopters during both daytime and nighttime wildfire missions.
TK-8 allows KFA to quickly map the affected area and share accurate information with ground response teams. This helps incident commanders determine how personnel should be deployed, and which areas require the greatest attention.
The system is particularly valuable at night, when darkness, smoke, and mountainous terrain severely restrict the pilots’ visibility. Because TK-8 can collect imagery across a wide swath to the side of the aircraft, crews can observe and map the fire without having to fly directly into dense smoke to obtain a better view. This improves flight safety and reduces the operational stress placed on pilots and mission crews.
What problems does Overwatch Imaging’s mission-ready sensor autonomy solve?
Overwatch Imaging’s mission-ready sensor autonomy addresses the difficulty of rapidly identifying, mapping, and monitoring wildfires across large areas. The TK-8 automatically collects wildfire intelligence through five different spectral sensors. This multispectral capability helps crews understand the fire under different operating conditions, including darkness and smoke.
The system also solves a major data-processing bottleneck. Under conventional workflows, a specialist may need to manually organize and stitch together hundreds or thousands of individual images after the aircraft returns. This process can take many hours, meaning that the completed map may arrive too late to support the most time-critical phase of the response.
With the systems' real-time QuickMosaic feature, the TK-8 processes the imagery onboard the aircraft and produces a georeferenced orthomosaic map of the wildfire area while the mission is still underway. In many cases, KFA can access and begin using the mapped intelligence even before the helicopter lands.
What benefits does Overwatch Imaging’s system deliver?
The most important benefit is the rapid delivery of actionable information.
The TK-8 does not simply record videos for later reviews. It automatically searches, collects, processes, and organizes imagery into a map that clearly shows the wildfire’s location, boundaries, remaining hot spots, and areas of greatest intensity. This allows airborne crews and ground response teams to work from the same operational picture.
The capability helps KFA move more quickly from observing wildfire to making informed operational decisions. The system reduces the burden on both the aircrew and the analysts while helping ground teams utilize their limited personnel and resources where they are most urgently needed.
What results have you seen since initial deployment? Can you point to any specific numbers, time saved, or impact on mission outcomes? Is there a specific story where Overwatch Imaging’s system delivered an impact?
One of the clearest examples came during a major wildfire that broke out on January 21, 2026, in Gwangyang, South Jeolla Province. The fire spread from a residential property into the surrounding mountain area, ultimately burning approximately 48 hectares of forest—an area equivalent to about 67 soccer fields—and forcing more than 600 residents to evacuate.
The response was made especially difficult by strong winds, dry conditions, sub-zero temperatures, frozen roads, and frozen firefighting hoses. Once darkness fell, conventional aerial firefighting operations were suspended, making it much harder for ground teams to understand where the fire was still active.
On the night of January 21, 2026, a KFA Surion helicopter equipped with the TK-8 was deployed for it s first nighttime operational wildfire mission. Using thermal imagery and rapid aerial mapping, the system clearly identified remaining embers and the areas where the fire was burning most intensely. This information helped specialized ground firefighting teams determine where to climb, how to deploy their personnel, and which locations required immediate attention.
During the night, the reported fire suppression rate increased from 66 percent to 90 percent before sunrise, and the wildfire was fully extinguished later that morning. KFA personnel stated that the system allowed them to accurately assess the fire line and significantly improve the efficiency of the suppression operation.
The result demonstrates that the value of TK-8 is not limited to reducing post-flight image-processing time. It can directly improve real-time decision-making, help ground teams allocate personnel more efficiently, support safer nighttime operations, and contribute to faster wildfire containment under extremely challenging conditions.
About Overwatch Imaging
Overwatch Imaging is an imagery intelligence technology company working to bring sensor autonomy to time-critical airborne search, detection, tracking and monitoring missions.
Our Automated Sensor Operator (ASO) software, native to our own line of purpose-built Smart Sensors and as an upgrade for airborne video gimbal platforms, brings Superhuman Vision and Workload Reduction to users of real-time imagery intelligence systems. We fundamentally believe that modern edge processing and AI-enabled autonomy can perform an important set of time-critical imagery intelligence missions better, faster and more safely than humans can alone.
Founded in 2016 in Hood River, Oregon, we support private sector companies as well as federal, state and local agencies around the world with missions ranging from wildfire mapping and disaster response to law enforcement, border security, maritime domain awareness and tactical intelligence.
More at www.overwatchimaging.com
TK-8 Smart Sensor: https://www.overwatchimaging.com/tk-sensor-payloads
Media Contact: Adam Lapierre: adam@overwatchimaging.com
About OQ Solution
OQ Solution specializes in providing advanced sensor, surveillance, and reconnaissance solutions tailored to government and defense applications. Their client base spans a range of sectors, including military, law enforcement, police and fire, aerospace, utilities and infrastructure.
More at: https://en.oqsolution.com
Media Contact: Kim Kinam – kinam.kim@oqsolutions.com
About Korea Forest Aviation
Korea Forest Aviation is part of the Korea Forest Service and is the national aerial firefighting and forest-disaster response arm of the Republic of Korea. It operates a nationwide fleet of aircraft to prevent and suppress forest fires and to support search and rescue, pest/disease control, and other forest-protection missions.
More at https://english.forest.go.kr
