Who owns the wildfire fleet: the private air-tanker com...

When a Very Large Air Tanker banks over a ridgeline and drops nine thousand gallons of retardant on the leading edge of a fire, the aircraft, the crew, and the company behind them are almost never part of the federal government. The United States runs one of the most dangerous aviation missions in the world, low and slow through smoke and mountain air, largely by writing contracts to private operators. The companion piece to this one, who gets paid to fight wildfires, followed the money. This piece follows the ownership: who actually holds these companies, how they are financed, and where their founders came from.

The short answer is that a public-safety capability sits in a small number of private hands, several of them heavily financialized, and that the people who build and run these firms disproportionately come out of the military and the land-management agencies. That pattern cuts two ways at once, and the most instructive case, Bridger Aerospace, now runs straight through the United States Senate.

Bridger Aerospace: a public company founded by a Navy SEAL

Bridger Aerospace trades on the Nasdaq Global Market under the ticker BAER and flies CL-415EAF "Super Scooper" amphibious water-bombers out of the Belgrade and Bozeman area of Montana, according to the company's investor-relations materials and its Wikipedia entry. Its shares began trading January 25, 2023, the day after its merger closed.

The company was founded in 2014 by Tim Sheehy. Bridger and Sheehy's campaign materials describe it as built "in his barn" by an "all-veteran" team, framing that comes from the company and the campaign rather than from an independent audit, so it is best read as the firm's own characterization. The 2014 founding date and Sheehy's role as founder are corroborated by SEC filings and independent press.

Sheehy's service record is documented and should be kept separate from the campaign controversy that later attached to one part of it. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 2008, served as a Navy SEAL officer with the rank of Lieutenant, deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and was awarded a Bronze Star with a "V" valor device and a Purple Heart, per his Senate biography and standard reference sources. A 2024 campaign dispute concerned his account of one gunshot wound. That dispute is about a single wound narrative. It is not about the SEAL service or the awards, which are separately documented, and this piece does not conflate the two.

Before Bridger, Sheehy spun off an aerial-surveillance and imaging arm as Ascent Vision Technologies in 2015. CACI International acquired Ascent Vision in 2020 for roughly $350 million (the final figure reported around $348.8 million, closing August 11, 2020). Press reporting states Sheehy personally netted about $75 million from that sale. The CACI deal itself is firmly documented in the company's announcement; the $75 million personal figure is a reported number, not a figure drawn from a filing, and is presented here as reported.

How Bridger got public, and how it got financed

Bridger went public through a SPAC merger with Jack Creek Investment Corp, which closed January 24, 2023, in a deal announced at a valuation of roughly $869 million. That $869 million is the announced deal value; a lower figure near $720 million circulates as the reverse-merger equity value, so the two should not be swapped for each other.

Two financial backers matter here, and they are different firms with different roles. Funds managed by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities were an early investor in Bridger, remained an equity holder after the SPAC merger, and held two board seats following the 2023 merger. That two-seat count is a 2023 fact; later analysis indicates Blackstone relinquished board seats while keeping a stake, so it should not be stated as a current arrangement. Blackstone was the equity backer. It was not the 2025 refinancing lender.

Bridger financed its growth heavily with debt. The clearest documented piece is a roughly $160 million Gallatin County, Montana municipal bond (Series 2022), later refinanced. Additional private and ESG-labeled bond financing was reported in 2022, but the exact tranche sizes beyond the $160 million municipal bond are less cleanly sourced, and Montana Free Press cited roughly $204 million in total long-term debt as of the FY2023 10-K.

That debt load produced the single most sobering line in Bridger's public record. Its FY2023 annual report, the 10-K filed in early 2024, carried "going concern" language: the auditor wrote that recurring losses, operating cash-flow deficits, debt-covenant violations, and insufficient liquidity "raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern." Bridger reported a net loss of about $77.4 million for 2023. It is worth being precise about what that language is and is not. As of that FY2023 filing, it was a covenant and liquidity warning, not a declaration of insolvency, and it was later addressed. It should always be dated to the FY2023 10-K rather than presented as the company's current condition.

The condition was addressed on October 29, 2025, when Bridger announced up to $331.5 million in new senior secured financing led by Bain Capital's Private Credit group (a $21.5 million revolver, a $210 million term loan, and a $100 million fleet-expansion facility). Combined with a headquarters sale-leaseback, that package refinanced the $160 million Gallatin County municipal bond and consolidated existing debt. The 2025 lender is Bain Capital, not Blackstone; the two should not be conflated. Bridger also pointed to a return to profit: the confirmed data point is a $308,000 profit in the second quarter of 2025 against a roughly $10 million loss a year earlier, while a "first full-year post-IPO profit" for 2025 is company guidance that should be treated as such until the FY2025 10-K confirms it.

Where Bridger's money comes from

Bridger's revenue comes overwhelmingly from government wildfire contracts. It reported record revenue of roughly $67 million in 2023 and about $98.6 million in 2024, up roughly 48 percent, tracking its earnings releases. ProPublica reported that the U.S. Forest Service alone paid Bridger more than $235 million for aircraft services since 2021. That $235 million is a cumulative figure since 2021, not a single annual total. A precise "percent of revenue from government" would require the customer-concentration note in the 10-K, but the government dependence is clear in both the qualitative record and that cumulative payment total.

The conflict-of-interest record, dated and attributed

Here the ownership story and the public record intersect most sharply, and it is worth separating documented facts from characterization.

The documented facts, drawn largely from ProPublica's reporting, are these. When Sheehy resigned as Bridger's CEO and from its board of directors on July 1, 2024, to focus on his Senate campaign, he owned about 21 percent of the company, reported as roughly 21.35 percent, about 10.4 million shares valued near $36.4 million as of a late-April 2024 snapshot, making him the largest individual shareholder. The board named Sam Davis interim CEO and Jeffrey Kelter Executive Chairman. Sheehy stepped back from operational and board control. He did not sell the company, and the dollar value of his stake moves with the stock. He was elected to the U.S. Senate from Montana on November 5, 2024, defeating incumbent Jon Tester, and was sworn in January 3, 2025, sitting on the Armed Services, Veterans' Affairs, and Commerce committees per reporting at the time.

In May 2025, roughly four months after taking office, Sheehy moved most of his Bridger stock into two revocable blind trusts. ProPublica reported that the trusts appear to be managed by executives at Tallgrass, an energy company previously run by his brother Matt, an early Bridger investor. The word "revocable" matters, and critics note it. The characterization that this arrangement may undermine the purpose of a blind trust is attributed to ethics expert Cynthia Brown, not adopted here as fact, and the Senate Ethics Committee vetted the arrangement.

The central episode: ProPublica reported that in March 2025 Sheehy asked Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to eliminate Forest Service inspections of firefighting aircraft, that a draft executive order to that effect leaked from his office in mid-April 2025 (with metadata showing edits by a Sheehy adviser and a Bridger lobbyist), and that the same month a Bridger scooper failed a Forest Service inspection over a wing crack, which was repaired by April 18, 2025. A note on dating: the events are dated to spring 2025, but ProPublica published its account in June 2026, syndicated across the Daily Montanan, Montana Free Press, and Washington State Standard around June 9 to 12, 2026. The event dates and the publication date are a year apart and are cited separately here.

Sheehy's side of this deserves fair statement. His office would frame the inspection change as a safety and efficiency policy, advanced through the United Aerial Firefighters Association, which he co-founded in 2022. The sharpest characterizations in the broader controversy, including statements from the Montana Democratic Party and commentary from short-seller Marc Cohodes, are partisan or interested sources and are not adopted here as neutral fact. The facts that stand on their own are the contract dollars, the inspection-cut request, the failed inspection, and the trust structure.

Perimeter Solutions: the retardant maker, its financiers, and its passports

The companion piece covered Phos-Chek's sole-source Forest Service relationship. The ownership angle is its own story. Perimeter Solutions, the maker of Phos-Chek long-term fire retardant, became publicly traded in November 2021 through a reverse-merger acquisition by EverArc Holdings Ltd. (a London-listed acquisition company) in a deal valued at roughly $2 billion, with shares listing on the NYSE under PRM on November 9, 2021. The $2 billion is the enterprise and deal value; a lower equity-consideration figure near $740 million also circulates and should not be presented as the headline.

EverArc was founded and co-chaired by W. Nicholas Howley, the founder and former chief executive of TransDigm, and William N. Thorndike Jr., a founder of Housatonic Partners and the author of the corporate-strategy book "The Outsiders." Other named EverArc founders include Tracy Britt Cool, who ran Berkshire Hathaway's Pampered Chef and co-founded Kanbrick, along with Vivek Raj and Haitham Khouri. These are the sponsors behind the public vehicle.

Perimeter was sold into that deal by SK Invictus Holdings, an affiliate of the private-equity firm SK Capital Partners. SK Capital had acquired the fire-safety and oil-additives businesses of ICL, formerly Israel Chemicals, in 2018, and renamed the unit Perimeter Solutions, carrying the Phos-Chek brand. It is worth noting that the retardant itself is older than any of these owners: Phos-Chek traces to Monsanto in the early 1960s, per Perimeter's own history page. SK Capital assembled the modern company from the 2018 carve-out; it did not invent the product.

The corporate domicile then took a notable path, and stating the sequence precisely matters. The merged company was first organized as Perimeter Solutions, SA, a Luxembourg company listed on a U.S. exchange. It later redomiciled to the United States, with all ordinary shares exchanged one-for-one for Perimeter Solutions, Inc., a Delaware corporation, effective at the close of trading on November 20, 2024. Delaware-entity shares traded from November 21, the PRM ticker was unchanged, and the headquarters remained in Clayton, Missouri. The full arc: a U.S.-listed EverArc deal, then a Luxembourg SA, then a Delaware Inc.

The rest of the fleet: joint ventures, family firms, and a bankruptcy

The other major operators show how varied this ownership landscape is, and how much of it traces back to specific service and industrial roots rather than to Wall Street.

10 Tanker Air Carrier operates the DC-10 Very Large Air Tankers, each carrying roughly 9,400 gallons of retardant, out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was formed in 2002 as a joint venture involving Omni Air International, which supplied surplus DC-10 airframes, and Cargo Conversions LLC, and it has flown firefighting DC-10s since 2006. Its present-day ultimate ownership is not documented in the public sources reviewed here, so who controls 10 Tanker today is left unstated pending corporate-record verification.
Coulson Aviation is a Canadian family-owned firm led by Wayne Coulson, flying C-130 Hercules and Boeing 737 air tankers. It grew out of Coulson Forest Products Ltd., founded in Port Alberni, British Columbia in 1960 by Cliff Coulson. Cliff Coulson served in the Second World War as a Canadian Army tank driver, not as a pilot, and worked postwar as a bulldozer operator; the family entered aviation through heli-logging with a Sikorsky S-61N in the late 1980s and shifted to firefighting in the mid-1990s. The military root here is armour, not aviation, and the through-line is multi-generational institutional knowledge in resource work.
Neptune Aviation Services, based in Missoula, Montana, operates BAe-146 jet air tankers. It was founded in 1993 by Marta Amelia Timmons following the purchase of Black Hills Aviation, and it is a privately held company. It is described in its own materials and in press as privately owned; there is no verified basis for calling it employee-owned or an ESOP, and this piece makes no such claim. Timmons died in December 2020.
Erickson shows the financial-engineering path in full. Erickson makes and operates the S-64 Air-Crane heavy-lift helicopter, having bought the S-64 type certificate from Sikorsky in 1992. It was sold to ZM Private Equity in 2007, went public on the Nasdaq in 2012 with ZM retaining roughly 63 percent, and after a debt-financed 2013 acquisition of Evergreen's helicopter unit for about $250 million, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2016, emerging privately in May 2017 having shed roughly $400 million in debt. Then, in April 2024, Helicopter Express acquired Erickson's aerial-firefighting operating division and its entire fleet of S-64 Air-Cranes (about fifteen aircraft), in a deal that closed April 26, 2024. This is a split worth keeping straight: after 2024, the firefighting operator is Helicopter Express, while Erickson Inc. continues as a separately capitalized OEM and MRO business, still building and servicing the S-64. They are not one entity anymore.

The service-roots pattern, stated carefully

There is a real pattern of military and ex-agency roots among these firms, but it is easy to overstate, so it is worth anchoring on what is documented. The concrete anchor is Bridger, founded by a Navy SEAL and described by the company as built with an all-veteran team. More broadly, air-tanker and lead-plane pilots are commonly drawn from former U.S. military aviators and from ex-Forest Service, BLM, and CAL FIRE personnel; that is a reasonable industry generalization, but it was not established here with a per-person citation, so it is held as a low-confidence observation rather than a claim about any named individual. No specific military branch or agency service is attributed to any founder or pilot beyond what a per-person source supports. Cliff Coulson's tank service is documented; it is not aviation.

The failure critique and the mission defense, side by side

The honest efficiency critique, much of it visible in the primary record, runs like this. First, concentration: a core public-safety capability is delivered by a small number of private firms, several of them financialized, from Blackstone-equity-backed and later Bain-Capital-debt-financed Bridger, to a Perimeter Solutions assembled by SK Capital and steered by TransDigm's Nick Howley and "Outsiders" author William Thorndike, to an Erickson that passed through private equity, an IPO, and a bankruptcy before its firefighting arm changed hands. Second, financial fragility: Bridger's own FY2023 10-K carried "going concern" language after a $77 million loss and covenant violations, a public-safety supplier warning, as of that filing, that it might not survive the year. Third, the revolving door: Bridger's founder is now a sitting senator on the Armed Services and Commerce committees who, per ProPublica, remained his firm's largest shareholder, later held stock in revocable blind trusts with trustees tied to his brother's company, and in 2025 pushed to eliminate the Forest Service aircraft-inspection regime his former company had just failed, while that same agency had paid the company more than $235 million since 2021. Those are documented facts; the sharpest words around them belong to interested parties and are attributed, not adopted.

The public-good defense is equally substantive and deserves a fair hearing. Aerial firefighting demands enormous, lumpy capital: a single CL-415 scooper or a converted C-130 or DC-10 tanker costs tens of millions of dollars, requires highly specialized maintenance, and puts crews into one of aviation's most dangerous mission profiles. The federal government has largely chosen not to own this fleet at scale, contracting surge capacity through Exclusive Use and Call-When-Needed agreements so it pays mainly during fire season rather than carrying idle aircraft year-round. Private operators bear the capital risk, the aircraft conversions, and the off-season carrying costs. The service-roots pattern the critique flags is, on its face, exactly the expertise the mission needs: military-trained aviators and ex-agency personnel bring hard-won operational judgment, and a career operator turned founder is arguably better positioned, not worse, to run this work. Family firms like Coulson bring decades of institutional knowledge and, by the company's account, more than 160,000 safe flight hours across sixty-plus years. And the contracts are, in the main, competed and audited; the very inspection regime at the centre of the Sheehy story exists precisely to police safety. Defenders would argue that the answer to concentration is more competition and stronger oversight, not nationalizing a capital-intensive fleet the government has repeatedly decided it does not want to own.

Both verdicts can be true at once. A fleet built by veterans and career specialists is a genuine asset, and a public-safety function this concentrated, this leveraged, and this entangled with the people who write and vote on its rules is a genuine oversight problem. The record supports holding both thoughts without resolving them into a slogan.

Fact-check notes and sources

Bridger Aerospace trades as BAER on the Nasdaq, flies CL-415EAF "Super Scooper" water-bombers, and is based in the Belgrade and Bozeman area of Montana; shares began trading January 25, 2023. Wikipedia: Bridger Aerospace; Bridger and Jack Creek closing announcement (GlobeNewswire).
Bridger was founded in 2014 by Tim Sheehy; the "in his barn" and "all-veteran team" descriptions are the company's and campaign's own framing, not independently audited. Bridger and Jack Creek closing announcement (GlobeNewswire).
Sheehy's documented service: USNA class of 2008, Navy SEAL Lieutenant, deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, Bronze Star with valor and Purple Heart. This is separate from the disputed 2024 campaign account of one gunshot wound. Wikipedia: Tim Sheehy.
Sheehy resigned as CEO and director of Bridger effective July 1, 2024; the board named Sam Davis interim CEO and Jeffrey Kelter Executive Chairman. Bridger Aerospace (investor relations).
Sheehy was elected U.S. Senator (R-MT) on November 5, 2024, defeating Jon Tester, and was sworn in January 3, 2025. Military.com.
At his July 2024 resignation Sheehy owned about 21 percent of Bridger (roughly 10.4 million shares, about $36.4 million as of a late-April 2024 snapshot), the largest individual shareholder; in May 2025 he moved most of that stock into two revocable blind trusts reportedly managed by Tallgrass executives (his brother Matt's former company). The conflict concern is attributed to ethics expert Cynthia Brown; the Senate Ethics Committee vetted the arrangement. ProPublica.
ProPublica reported that in March 2025 Sheehy asked Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to eliminate Forest Service aircraft inspections, that a draft executive order leaked from his office in April 2025, and that a Bridger scooper failed a Forest Service inspection over a wing crack that month (repaired by April 18, 2025); the article was published in June 2026. ProPublica.
Bridger went public via SPAC merger with Jack Creek Investment Corp, closing January 24, 2023, at an announced valuation of roughly $869 million. Bridger and Jack Creek closing announcement (GlobeNewswire).
Blackstone Tactical Opportunities was an early investor and held two board seats after the 2023 merger (a 2023 arrangement that later changed); it is the equity backer, distinct from the 2025 debt lender. SEC EDGAR (Jack Creek / Bridger Form 425).
Bridger's FY2023 10-K carried "substantial doubt" going-concern language (recurring losses, covenant violations, insufficient liquidity); FY2023 net loss was about $77.4 million. The language is as of the FY2023 filing (early 2024) and reflected a covenant and liquidity warning, not insolvency. Montana Free Press; SEC EDGAR (Bridger FY2023 10-K/A).
On October 29, 2025, Bridger announced up to $331.5 million in senior secured financing led by Bain Capital Private Credit, refinancing the $160 million Gallatin County municipal bond via a sale-leaseback; the confirmed profit data point is a $308,000 second-quarter 2025 profit, with full-year profitability presented as company guidance. Bridger Aerospace (GlobeNewswire).
Bridger revenue was roughly $67 million (2023) and about $98.6 million (2024, up about 48 percent); the Forest Service paid Bridger more than $235 million for aircraft services since 2021 (a cumulative figure). ProPublica.
Ascent Vision Technologies (spun off 2015) was acquired by CACI in 2020 for about $350 million; the reported figure that Sheehy personally netted roughly $75 million is a press figure, not a filing. CACI acquisition announcement (Business Wire); Montana Free Press.
Perimeter Solutions (Phos-Chek maker) went public in November 2021 via reverse merger with EverArc Holdings Ltd. (not "EverArrow"), a roughly $2 billion deal listing on the NYSE as PRM. PR Newswire.
EverArc's founders include W. Nicholas Howley (TransDigm founder), William N. Thorndike Jr. (author of "The Outsiders"), Tracy Britt Cool, Vivek Raj, and Haitham Khouri. PR Newswire.
Perimeter was sold by SK Invictus, an affiliate of SK Capital Partners, which carved out ICL's fire-safety and oil-additives business in 2018 and renamed it Perimeter Solutions; the Phos-Chek brand itself dates to Monsanto in the early 1960s. SK Capital Partners.
The merged company was Perimeter Solutions, SA (Luxembourg), and later redomiciled to Delaware as Perimeter Solutions, Inc., effective at the close of trading November 20, 2024, via a one-for-one share exchange, with headquarters remaining in Clayton, Missouri. Perimeter Solutions (Newsfile).
10 Tanker Air Carrier operates DC-10 Very Large Air Tankers (about 9,400-gallon capacity) from Albuquerque, formed in 2002 as a joint venture of Omni Air International and Cargo Conversions LLC and flying firefighting DC-10s since 2006; present-day ultimate ownership is not documented in the public sources reviewed. Wikipedia: DC-10 Air Tanker.
Coulson Aviation is a Canadian family firm (Wayne Coulson) flying C-130 and Boeing 737 tankers, rooted in Coulson Forest Products (1960, Port Alberni, BC), founded by Cliff Coulson, a Second World War Canadian Army tank driver (not a pilot). Wikipedia: Coulson Aviation.
Neptune Aviation Services (Missoula, Montana) flies BAe-146 tankers, was founded in 1993 by Marta Amelia Timmons after buying Black Hills Aviation, and is privately held; there is no verified basis for an employee-ownership or ESOP claim. Timmons died in December 2020. Wikipedia: Neptune Aviation.
Erickson makes and operates the S-64 Air-Crane (type certificate bought from Sikorsky in 1992), was sold to ZM Private Equity in 2007, IPO'd in 2012 (ZM roughly 63 percent), filed Chapter 11 in November 2016, and emerged in May 2017; in April 2024 Helicopter Express bought Erickson's firefighting operations and Air-Crane fleet, while Erickson Inc. continues as a separate OEM and MRO company. Wikipedia: Erickson Inc.; Vertical Mag.
The service-roots pattern is anchored on Bridger's documented all-veteran team; broader claims that tanker and lead-plane pilots are commonly former military aviators and ex-agency personnel are a low-confidence industry generalization, not a per-person claim. Wikipedia: Tim Sheehy.

Who owns the wildfire fleet: the private air-tanker companies and their military and government roots