Abstract: A method to protect assets within a defined region against the threat of fire, including the steps of: A) positioning aerial forest fire fighting assets within a range allowing the assets to reach and attack a surveyed fire anywhere within a periphery of one or more strategic assets within 60 minutes of issuance of an order to attack a fire; B) integrating available regional ground fire fighting assets to follow up initial forest fire aerial attacks; C) continually surveying of the periphery of the strategic assets using one or more sensors, the periphery being at least ten miles in radius; D) gathering surveillance data from sensors in a central command; E) analyzing surveillance data according to user defined algorithms and database data in the central command; F) generating an alarm status in the central command based on data analysis of surveillance data combined with reference data; G) alerting the aerial forest fighting assets when data analysis justifies such alerting, such alerting being communicated