Slashdot Mirror
Military Blimp Breaks Free and Drifts Over the Mid-Atlantic Trailing Tether (baltimoresun.com)
McGruber writes: The Baltimore Sun reports that a military surveillance blimp has broken free of its mooring at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and was last seen drifting at 16,000 ft over Pennsylvania. The 243-foot-long, helium-filled JLENS (Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System) aerostat detached from its mooring at about 11:54 a.m. Wednesday. It was trailing approximately 6,700 feet of cable. "Anyone who sees the aerostat is advised to contact 911 immediately," spokeswoman Heather Roelker said. "People are warned to keep a safe distance from the airship and tether as contact with them may present significant danger."
Crashed, causing widespread power outages.
It got its own Twitter feed though: https://twitter.com/BmoreBlimp
FTFA: "Raytheon, the contractor that makes the blimps, says the cable is unlikely to break.
"The chance of that happening is very small because the tether is made of Vectran and has withstood storms in excess of 100 knots," the company said on its website. "However, in the unlikely event it does happen, there are a number of procedures and systems in place which are designed to bring the aerostat down in a safe manner.""
So what exactly happened? The cable broke, AND they are unable to get the blimp to safely land?
Oh please, think of all that precious Helium!!!!
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
A blimp is a powered craft. An aerostat is a tethered balloon.
If it were a blimp -- even an unmanned blimp -- and it had fuel, they could just drive it back home.
I guess the Proving Ground proved it's not quite ready for prime time.
So the military is sending up a trial balloon?
I wonder what the reaction might be..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Good.
If you believe this has anything to do with some supposed cruise missile problem, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
Oh the humility!
No one would have seen it, with the remnants of Hurricane Patricia hitting the area.
it eats Pittsburgh.
"People are warned to keep a safe distance from the airship and tether as contact with them may present significant danger."
(from the various armed alphabet agents closely following)
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Mistakes were made....
Billions spent and the stupid thing couldn't detect a man in an ultralight headed straight for the Capital, we need to cut our losses and scrap the thing already.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Um, Pennsylvania is on the east coast.
Oy! Apparently MSNBC had commentary explaining that helium was explosive and dangerous. O_o
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
I need to brush up on my geography. APG I know is along the Bay. Used to be. Better check.
How could they lose it? Surely after $2.5B spent on the program, they had enough money to slap a GPS tracker on it.
My guess is that it was for radar and other interrogative technologies and all communications was through the umbilical to the ground. However, it should have a GPS for timing and for positional accuracy in relation to the radar and what the radar sees when and where.
CNN just reported that military jets were scrambled. Are they going to shoot it down?
It already happened with entanglement where the tether took down some power lines. I could see it damaging houses and other tall structures like a water tower if it encounters is.
ESD: I know aircraft build up static charge while flying so that worries me. If someone or something conductive were to touch the tether it could discharge and really hurt/kill a person or damage property.
It's a rigid air ship.
All aboard for safety and adventure on the rigid airship Excelsior, where the pampered luxury of a cruise ship meets the smoothness of modern air travel.
i take it you've never lived under the protection of one in a combat zone. not to mention, they become the main target of the locals. better it then I.
Recently I learned that there are no satellites; most dishes are pointed towards a transmitter on a nearby mountain.
I wonder whether this airship was also used to simulate a satellite? If so, there was likely a TV outage "nearby".
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Very observant. The remnant crossed Texas, along the gulf coast, and now up the East coast.
"Oh the, um, Inhumanity!" Hey, if it gets to international waters, can just anybody grab it?
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
That's the budget breaking free and drifting into troubled seas. And that's not a tether being dragged along, that's the U S taxpayer.
And hurricanes coming out of the Pacific, absolutely do not cross the entire continent dropping inches of rain on everything in their path.
Is this article a magnet for stupid or something?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
used by Henckel for a duct tape product. which is actually no good for ducting, because it dries out and comes apart. metallic aluminum tape with a different glue is what is professionally used for air ducting.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Danger from a tether? I'm not saying there's aliens on that airship, but.... it's aliens.
Fight for your bitcoins!
so, either it was left unmanned, or the remote control is a complete failure. Either way this is an idiotic level of incompetence.
It is not the same low, but it is the moisture associated with the hurricane. The hurricane broke up over Texas, but formed a low in the gulf of Mexico which travelled along the coast, dumping rain across the south. The moisture was pulled up the east coast by a low that developed over the Midwest.
Blimp/Balloon is now on the ground in Montour County, PA and being secured.
Karma: Bad
The military should be careful with those things. Some people might think that a military surveillance drone "randomly" getting too close is an act of war.
As opposed to having a cable dragging on the ground, destroying everything in it's path?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Does anyone know the current whereabouts of Sideshow Bob?
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
Since it's Military... It's gotta be a cheap Blimp, maybe only a few dozen Million dollars. Cheap compared to that new Bomber, which is coming out to $2Billion per plane, at least.
The Pentagon's budget is unlimited, says the GOP, but we can't afford healthcare or social security, or even have a post office.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The neat thing about trailing a long tether is that it keeps the airship at a constant height above ground...if it were to drift higher, it would lift more tether off the ground, which would make it heavier - and thus descent. If it drifts lower, more tether rests on the ground, which lightens the airship and allow it to go up again. Net result is an elegant feedback control system that keeps the airship at constant height.
www.sjbaker.org
Please update the summary.
Which (in my mind) means chamber another round and keep firing. Don't worry - it'll deflate!
http://www.wtae.com/weather/wi...
apparently.
And hurricanes coming out of the Pacific, absolutely do not cross the entire continent dropping inches of rain on everything in their path.
Is this article a magnet for stupid or something?
If the storm path was a little bit more to the south, it could have indeed regenerated into a new cyclone in the Gulf.
It just wanted to go on a leaf peeping tour.
An unmanned Army surveillance blimp that tore loose from its ground tether in Maryland and drifted north Wednesday is on the ground in Pennsylvania, authorities said.
The blimp, which is 243 feet long and was trailing more than a mile of heavy cable, broke free from its mooring at Aberdeen Proving grounds at around 12:20 p.m., North American Aerospace Defense Command said.
The Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS) surveillance aerostat was on the ground in Moreland Township, Pennsylvania, NORAD said. There were no injuries reported.
William Pitts
U.S. Air Force Col. William Pitts stands in front of an unmanned aerostat, part of the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System. Patrick Semansky / AP file
NORAD said a military recovery team was on the way to the area. Moreland Township is about 20 miles east of Williamsport.
Two F-16 fighter jets were scrambled from Atlantic City, New Jersey, and tracked the blimp's course. The blimp was holding at around 16,000 feet over Wilmington, Pennsylvania, NORAD said in a statement at around 2 p.m.
The fighter jets were armed but did not shoot the blimp down, NORAD said. The tail section detached first, and was found about a quarter-mile from where the rest of the blimp landed, officials said.
Ground controllers at Aberdeen Proving Ground do have the ability to deflate the helium-filled blimp, which could then slowly descend to the ground, but wasn't immediately clear whether that system was used, officials said.
The dragging tether caused power outages as it drifted over Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf's office said in a statement. Power company PPL Electric reported that 30,000 people lost power due to the drifting balloon, and by Wednesday afternoon 15,000 remained without electricity.
The drifting blimp was an odd sight to residents in the flight path. Sylvia Hock and her 9-year-old son, Aidan, were getting out of their car at their Millville home when they spotted the blimp.
"We thought it was going to land," Hock said. "We thought it was going to pop it got so low. We called 911, who said they were tracking it."
NORAD said it worked closely with the Federal Aviation Administration to keep commercial airlines informed of the blimp's location to avoid any close calls.
NORAD said it was still trying to determine how the blimp got loose. Officials said the tether was within weather design minimums when the blimp became detached.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fighter-jets-track-military-blimp-drifting-over-pennsylvania-n453106
Pink Floyd must be reforming...
I'm sure I can shoot it down for violating my privacy.
As I sit here within 5 miles of the east coast, I look up out of my living room window, and see....the remnants of Hurricane Patricia.
[The blimp] was last seen drifting at 16,000 ft over Pennsylvania. [...] It was trailing approximately 6,700 feet of cable.
So, no, it's not hitting the ground.
Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System is not JLENS, it's JLACMDENSS.
As clearly, it was not powered nor tethered....
I think should call it an "blump"
But I can now say, I was there in Baltimore "when the balloon went up”...
Gee and I thought only WWII survivors could ever quote that.
hydrogen and helium:
"There was fear it could have exploded. There's helium inside, right?"
Why?
I prefer the other twitter feed for the blimp ... er... aerostat:
https://twitter.com/AberdeenBl...
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Maybe, "top ten military excuses for the blimp breaking free"
10. Blimp? What Blimp?
9. Forgot to use The Club
8. If you love something, set it free
That's all I could think of.
maybe it'll stop fucking with the 2m amateur band.
He sais he is sorry and asks you to buy him another one.
>> "People are warned to keep a safe distance from the airship and tether as contact with them may present significant danger."
>
> Danger?
Easy. That ballon is filled with super-secret US military sensor payloads. If you come in contact with that tech, the government will have to lock you up for life to prevent you from selling what you saw and looted to the ruffians or th P.R.C.
Spending 30+ years in an underground Supermax cell is big enough danger or better say risk for anyone.
the news article linked to has had it's content updated...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
The ultimate ... hack on the United States could involve severing the ... cables:
tech.slashdot.org/story/15/10/26/0114256/russian-presence-near-undersea-cables-concerns-us
"Not on your life, my Hindu friend!"
Monocable!!
The death knell of blimp based spying.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I think I see the problem here.
How done one "grab" a tether where the free end is 10,000 ft in the air? An interesting problem.
That is up at the upper range to which a helicopter can actually hover... Even if it could, the rotors would be in the way, and you would have to somehow grab it horizontally. A plane of course can't stop, and would need some sort of grappling device, if one exists... On top of that, I don't know what "Vectran" is, but presumably it is an ultra strong 6700ft cable, which is likely as much to slice through a plane and whatever is trying to grab it than not...
How did a blimp get from the middle of the ocean, against prevailing winds, to Pennsylvania? Is this another example of the Americans' legendary prowess in geography?