While aerospace giant Lockheed Martin is best known for its technological expertise building airplanes, spacecraft and satellites, the company has deployed a decidedly non-technical weapon in the battle against wildfires at its southwest Littleton campus: goats.

Used as wild, four-legged fire mitigation helpers, more than 1,200 goats roam the aerospace company’s Waterton Campus. Company officials hope the goats help prevent devastating wildfires in their backyard.

Though the nearby Quarry Fire burned roughly 600 acres this past summer — small in comparison to blazes like the Alexander Mountain fire in Larimer County and the Stone Canyon Fire in Boulder County — the terrain burning in the canyon complicated firefighting efforts.

Enter the goats.

No, not Peyton Manning or Nikola Jokic, rather the real ones: Four legged, horned animals that are described by one Goat Green co-founder as hearty animals. Goat Green offers “goats for hire” and focuses on fire mitigation in several states, including Hawaii. Goats offer a more flexible, cost effective way to manage large swathes of terrain vulnerable to wildfires and they can scale steep slopes that may be inaccessible to heavy equipment, according to the Goat Green website.

The goats, while adorable, are also diligent workers.

“They work every day somewhere … (There are) 1,200 goats which means 60 tons of living, self-propelled machine that’s doing 29 things at the same time,” Co-Founder Lani Malmberg said. “They stand on their hind legs to eat and they clear eight-to-nine feet down to the ground… They eat it, recycle it through their gut, put it back on the hillside and then 4,800 hooves trample that in to stabilize the hillside.”

Trampling the soil and waste product helps to build up the actual volume of soil on the foothills Lockheed Martin calls home, Malmberg said. Colorado does not have a lot of soil to begin with, she said, and the goats help add layers and increase nutrient content in it.

The goats are quite happy on the Colorado foothills and, thanks to some biologic magic in their gut, can eat food that may be toxic to other wild animals, like horses. And one of the best parts: The goats work daily and into the night, happily chomping or ruminating, without costing overtime or hazard pay.

Because of how sensitive some of the satellites and other components being built by Lockheed Martin are, even if a fire is not threatening a building, byproducts from any area wildfire can cause a work stoppage.

“As we learned in the Quarry Fire, even though it was north of this campus, it did shut down some of our operations here,” Lockheed Martin’s Vice President of Safety and Quality Sean Vogel said. “We’ve got clean rooms which require a certain level of air quality and we had to shut those down because the smoke came through. … So that’s one of the key things we’re looking at.”

While not everyone should look into buying a herd of goats to help prevent wildfires, there are steps residents can take, according to Serena Silva, a community risk reduction specialist with the South Metro Fire District. South Metro was the agency responsible for fighting the Quarry Fire and is well versed with the tough terrain in the area.

In recent years, especially after the Marshall fire destroyed parts of Louisville and caused billions in damage, she said it’s time to take wildfire risk seriously, even for those who do not live in the mountains.

A good step is to contact the local sheriff’s office and figure out an evacuation route and ask about alternative routes, she said. South Metro Fire Rescue also has a guidebook on best practices and six lessons learned from the Marshall Fire available online.

“We should always survey our property, whether it’s (Lockheed’s Campus), or a small condo. … We want to shore resiliency and address fuels adjacent to your home,” Silva said. “Being a good neighbor is actually an essential part of fire mitigation, having a neighborhood meeting, saying ‘let’s look at this from a comprehensive and holistic outlook and what would we do in case of an emergency?’”