With the start of the fire season about to begin, civilian fire crews are doing special training this week with the military.

Scott Fischer, U.S. Forest Service, "This is the inside of a C-130 Hercules plane. This is the plane that carries the retardant, an operation that's been in place for 35 years."

These are the military planes civilian agencies are training with, that use an airborne fluid retardant on fires.

Fischer, "The whole purpose of retardant is to support the folks on the ground, make sure we have some sort of retardant barrier between them and the fires as best we can so we can go in and fight the fire."

Here's how the air drop works. A smaller aircraft acts as the lead plane, guiding the giant C-130 to its target and then makes a drop.

This is all part of what's called the modular airborne fire fighting system of MAFFS.

Capt. John Peterson, Kern County Fire Department, "Obviously there's communications back where we want the drop and all that kind of stuff. But we are in a situation where it's very effective and usually very important to what we're doing."

But while the system is highly effective, it can also be highly dangerous.

Lt. Col. Dave Conduit, Mission Commander, "The first week I was ever flying this mission right out of California we lost a couple of engines, came real close to hitting the ground. Reminds us this is a real hazardous mission, but it is something that has a lot of value."

MAFFS has been around for 35 years and a newer improved version MAFFS-2 is expected to be in place this summer.

Major Bryan Allen, California National Guard, "But really what it boils down to is the amount of property and lives saved. And that's really the metric that I'd like to see is saving the land, saving the houses, saving the cattle of the ranchers and saving lives."