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Newsmax
$2.7B Surveillance Runaway Blimp Floating Over Eastern Seaboard
Wednesday, October 28, 2015 01:53 PM
By: Newsmax Wires
A $2.7 billion military blimp has come loose from its tethers at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and is now floating over Pennsylvania with jets monitoring its location, according to news reports.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the blimp, called JLens was supposed to do surveillance via remote control, but instead has done little of that.
"Seventeen years after its birth, JLENS is a stark example of what defense specialists call a 'zombie' program: costly, ineffectual and seemingly impossible to kill,'' according to the newspaper's report.
The JLENS aerostat, which is nearly the length of a football field, detached from its mooring in Aberdeen Proving Grounds at around 12:20 pm (1620 GMT), the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said in a statement.
Two F-16 fighters were monitoring the helium-filled blimp as it floated northeast of Washington at an altitude of about 16,000 feet (4875 meters).
"NORAD officials are working closely with the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) to ensure air traffic safety, as well as with our other interagency partners to address the safe recovery of the aerostat," NORAD said.
It was not immediately clear how officials planned to recapture the blimp.
JLENS blimps carry powerful radars that can protect an area about the size of Texas from airborne threats including unmanned aircraft, cruise missiles and other objects.
The aerostats normally fly at about 10,000 feet.
In its extensive report, the Times wrote that JLens was supposed to detect all kinds of airborne threats to the US, but in one glaring example, it failed and failed miserably.
Specifically, the day a Florida postal worker flew his small single-person aircraft into the nation's capital to demand campaign finance reform, it was JLens' job to detect the incursion:
"JLENS is intended to spot just such a tree-skimming intruder, and two of the blimps were supposed to be standing sentry above the capital region. Yet 61-year-old Douglas Hughes flew undetected through 30 miles of highly restricted airspace before landing on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol.
At a congressional hearing soon afterward, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) demanded to know how 'a dude in a gyrocopter 100 feet in the air' was able to pull off such an audacious stunt.
'Whose job is it to detect him?' Chaffetz asked.
"It was JLENS’ job, but the system was 'not operational' that day, as the head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, Adm. William E. Gortney, told Chaffetz. The admiral offered no estimate for when it would be. "
