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Best Photos of Runaway Army Blimp Posted: 29 Oct 2015 09:49 AM PDT ![]()
The photograph above shows what a $2.7 billion U.S. military aerostat is supposed to look like — tethered to the ground. But on Wednesday, as my colleague Richard Sisk reported, one of the 7,000-pound unmanned surveillance crafts broke loose from its moorings at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and drifted into Pennsylvania, triggering the scrambling of F-16 fighter jets and causing widespread power outages before it was secured. See the photograph below. ![]()
The story dominated news headlines and social media, with reporters, defense industry observers and concerned and curious citizens taking to Twitter to provide real-time updates. The even got a mention during the Republican presidential debate later in the evening. Here at DefenseTech, we wanted to provide readers with some background on the troubled program, technically called Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Sensor System, or JLENS, and share some of the best pictures from the hilarious and, for a moment, terrifying story. As Sisk reported, the giant, white, helium-filled craft is part of North American Aerospace Defense Command's East Coast surveillance system:
In an investigative piece last month, David Willman, a reporter for The Los Angeles Times, reported that despite its cost, the technology "has struggled to track flying objects and to distinguish friendly aircraft from threatening ones." Indeed, in April, it didn't detect the Florida postal worker who flew a gryocopter onto the lawn of the Capitol because it wasn't working that day, the article states. What's more, Willman also reported that the manufacturer pressed Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright to support the troubled program.
Making matters worse, the Army had previously promised that the aerostat would be "tethered to the ground at all times," but even Defense Secretary Carter acknowledged during a press conference on Wednesday that "these things happen in bad weather." What's more, there may have been problems with the craft's auto-deflate technology. It drifted almost 200 miles north from Aberdeen outside Baltimore — its mile-long Kevlar tether knocking out power lines along the way — before crashing in pieces in the woodlands of Moreland Township, Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, here are some of the best photos and tweets of the runaway blimp.
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