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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."
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
They're just saying it was a missile defense balloon to cover up the fact that it's SKYNET, and it's now sentient.
See? What'd I tell you. Fucking SKYNET.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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....
Thank you Captain Obvious...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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.
Black Sunday
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 ^_^
Actually, If you think about how you might track a cruse missile using Radar, especially one that is designed to follow the terrain at low levels, having a radar system which is up high and stationary makes sense. You'd also be able to track ballistic munitions tracks like mortars and smaller missiles from this vantage point.
Of course, it does afford you the perfect vantage point to track pretty much all moment on the ground, which is something the military needs to be very careful about doing for constitutional reasons.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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.
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.
Nah, they're going to escort it to Massachusetts where the Patriots experts in deflation will careful deflate it for them.
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.
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..
And they would never be testing things at a place called the "Aberdeen Proving Ground"
Your tinfoil hat slipped a bit - better get it centered again.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Yes, APG is north of Baltimore, and south of the Maxon-Dixon Line. Drift a little north and you are in Pennsylvania.
Anyone with a submarine?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
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?
And Russian or Chinese submarines.
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
Which (in my mind) means chamber another round and keep firing. Don't worry - it'll deflate!
http://www.wtae.com/weather/wi...
apparently.
It just wanted to go on a leaf peeping tour.
How do they work when there are no mountains anywhere nearby?
Uncle Sam in E.R. from an apparent gunshot wound to the foot and powder burns on right hand... again...
Pink Floyd must be reforming...
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.
Foreign government attack on power infrastructure?
Nahh, just government contractor cost-cutting. I mean, they abbreviated "Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System" as "JLENS" to save ink, who knows what other corners they cut. The tether was probably recycled baling twine.
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.
Per CNN, the blimp _is_ down. The military did something to force it down [*]
[*] Maybe they told that guy with the shotgun that it was a drone ...
Like a good neighbor, fsck is there
However in the 90s there was a thing called Wirelss Cable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I worked for a provider. They could get a smallish set (15-20) channels out to places where the cable company would nto run cable, much cheaper than satellite at the time. It was quickly overtaken by true satellite and expanding cable networks with larger and increasingly digital offerings.
Interestingly we were the first high-speed internet provider in our area. It was one way cable Internet. 1 QAM Docsis 1.1 channel broadcast wirelessly downstream. Upstream was provided by a dial up modem, and some funky split routing.
The company I worked for was also an ISP and regional telco/mobile provider. I did cable modem installs and maintained the headend equipment, then promoted on to their NOC. Soon ater I went to the NOC, thet started launching DSL and the wierd split cable internet went away. That same POTS upsream was also often used in regular cable plants until the local provider switched their amplifiers to pass upstream traffic.
Silence is a state of mime.
I prefer the other twitter feed for the blimp ... er... aerostat:
https://twitter.com/AberdeenBl...
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
That's true, in the same way Pearl Harbor didn't need to be defended because the only people with bombs in that area were the US Army and Navy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
and Iceland
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.
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?
I don't know. There have been a lot of GPS failures, and the "satellite phones" that are supposed to have coverage everywhere there's open sky, often don't.
GPS doesn't function in the southern "hemisphere" except near land, which tells me it's land-based, not satellite-based.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Interesting, the Wireless Cable! Are there still installations? Perhaps that was what the people on the radio show had found and were discussing as if it was supposed to be pointing at a satellite?
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.