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Runaway Blimp "Has Been Secured" After Leaving 18,000 Without Power
The exciting, if brief, life in the wild by the untethered JLENS blimp has come to a crashing halt. Moments ago, Norad told AP reported that the blimp is "on the ground and secure."
Bob Reese, a state police spokesman in Montoursville, says it came down in the area of Muncy, near Williamsport.
As reported earlier, The unmanned Army surveillance blimp broke loose from its ground tether at a military base and drifted over central Pennsylvania as fighter jets tracked it. The aircraft is known as a Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System and can be used as part of a missile defense system. It's not clear how the blimp came loose.
This is what appears to be the final resting place of the blimp:
Here is the #blimp well part of it...in a tree near Muncy @WNEP pic.twitter.com/epkaSuFsxj
— Nikki Krize (@NikkiKrize) October 28, 2015
And finally, perhaps just to confirm the Keynesian "burst bubble fallacy", and since not even a runaway blimp crisis should ever be put to waste, expect a spending spree in the aftermath of the military's latest goof up: according to Columbia County chief clerk Gail Kipp the blimp dragged its tether line, which took out power lines and has caused up to 18,000 power outages.
Surely this is a good opportunity to flex that newly expanded $19.6 trillion debt ceiling with a few hundred million in "recovery" spending.
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Looks broken, better buy a new one for $50 billion.
… the blimp is "on the ground and secure”
They must’ve used a chokehold or a Taser. ;-)
Looney
Blimp Lives Matter
This system is being developed to protect only Washington DC and it's environs, the number one place in the USA that needs to be destroyed.
Quick, while their shields are down!!!
This is just the 'cover story'. Think Roswell.
Nah, nobody's afraid of aliens any more. Doesn't serve a good political purpose, either.
How about this: "NORAD spokesperson reported the blimp was hijacked by terrorists with box cutters but was shot down by F-16s before they could reach their suicide bombing destination which was believed to be somewhere in Philadelphia. As the stricken blimp fell trees and some houses caught fire and collapsed shortly afterward. A special meeting of the Department of Homeland Security was called for to decide which of your freedoms to take away next as a result of this tragic incident."
Now THAT'S a cover story.
Would you believe 'High Tech Secret Antartic Base Nazi Death Machines'?
Huh? Yeah, what's your answer to that? Makes me shit, too.
Would you believe 'High Tech Secret Moon Base Nazi Death Machines'?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034314/
Could someone “smarter” than me please explain the practicality of a military blimp in the 21st century? A laser could cut it in half before the controllers on the ground could say “oh shit”...
How much did this pentagram program cost and how many degenerate spawn did it bring forth into our world courtesy of the superior medical care the government goons get to have paid for by all of us?
Actually, for their intended purpose, they rock. First, they have an almost unlimited loiter time (as long as they don't cut the tether). This allows them to be used for long range camera / observation posts and radio relay blimps. They are relatively low cost compared to an aircraft in the same mission and support crew is 3-4 to launch/recover/refit vs the dozens involved with a regular aircraft.
As to a laser cutting it, no chance. You give lasers too much credit. They ride very high and would require a kinetic hit (missile or projectile) to bring it down. They are filled with helium not hydrogen so they don't explode.
In reality, there are hundreds deployed daily both by DoD and Border patrol here in the US and overseas.
"In reality, there are hundreds deployed daily both by DoD and Border patrol here in the US and overseas."
Apparently you didn't read the post by the guy doing some oil field work down along the US/Mexico border. He was talking to the BPs and asking why he wasn't seeing the blimp flying all that much. He was told that they don't fly in high winds. The poster had to chuckle, knowing the true climatological environment of which he was in.
Government - Nuff said. FedGov initially chose to buy French Made Balloons, over the Wright Brothers new fangled airplane.
What would terrorists take out in Philadelphia?
The Schuylkill Expressway?
Maybe the Liberty Bell. Or the Comcast building. Taking out the Sure-kill would be an improvement, I think. Kudos on the proper spelling of it, though.
THERE ARE ACTUAL PICTURES THAT PROVE THAT THE CHINESE SHOT IT DOWN!!!!
http://www.chinadailyasia.com/attachement/jpg/site441/20130716/137393540...
man... this is not going to end well...
Don't worry, the Dutch wil investigate!
I heard they called in the Malaysian's for back up.
Those are my kids, bubba.
Russian backed rebels in Crimea took it down with their sophisticated shoulder mounted rocket launchers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7vCww3j2-w
Exactly! "All done by design, all done by Agenda." Listen, all the Crimjnal Pure Evil Diabolical Infrustructre is to protect & keep in tact the Criminal Fraud UNITED STATES, CORP. INC. system once the Collapse occurs.
Barrage balloons?
What a f**King joke like the rest of Trayvonville USSA where dumb white males cheer on their Trayvon thug heroes like little girls.
This dumb blimp was supposed to protect Wash DC from those Russia Kalibr NK cruise missiles that were used from the Caspian Sea. Various Russian ship can launch these missiles. Including from shipping containers on cargo ships.
This stupid blimp piece of shit was the Obola-McCain-Trayvon-Soros-USSA detection system. Trillions spent and it looks like these Russian cruise missiles are a major threat. That piece of shit Patriot system will not take down those Kalibr NK's.
It's just another popped bubble.
Why, I believe that blimp has a scrotum.
Nah... It's a Camel Toe ;-)
Looney
Nah its a chode. Blimps are definitely male.
Looks like a London Whale with a boner. It should have a smiley face on it....
That's a horny-looking blimp.
May be trolling for she-blimps.
He's got the fire down below.
<-- Goodyear
<-- Raytheon
Thank god....
that BLIMP was America's first, middle, last and backup defence against the space invaders!
just think about it.... it takes them a whole day to catch a rogue blimp...
imagine that the US militairy had to catch a butterly... they would have had to use nukes!
JLENS can't track incoming russian cruise missiles. JLENS failed to perform in US states , it works perfectly in Afghanistan near nato bases to avoid taliban ambush because the land surrounding is all barren and flat ie. a desert.
So if you're thinking US is safe from cruise missiles then keep dreaming.
How a $2.7 billion air-defense system became a 'zombie' program JLENS failed to perform as promised
"JLENS can't track incoming russian cruise missiles."
You are mistaken. The radars in the bags actually do work and can track cruise missiles and deliver data to weapons, as the article states. The Not performing "as promised" isn't the same thing as not working at all.
JLENS is an enormous, wasteful boondoggle that sucked scarce Pentagon R&D money away from more important work than saving the turds in Washington DC from cruise missiles. The program should be terminated because the defended assets aren't worth defending.
Thanx for the heads up. You didn't read the article properly JLENS has struggled to track flying objects and to distinguish friendly aircraft from threatening ones.It can't protect the states from barrage of cruise missiles attack since there are no defensive weapons with US to destroy those stealthy low flying missiles. Their only tactic is to send F-16s in air to destroy them. Though US uses radar equipped plane to track cruise missiles.
Agree with your assessment of actually being able to defend against a barrage of cruise missiles.
This is how I read the whole incident: a self-sufficient weather ballon got humped by a sentient drone somewhere in the stealthy skies over Murica, and this is the illegitimate offspring, who has now, herself, in adolescence, become pregnant with God knows what (that's the bulge) and wandered off course so as to do something discretely, perhaps have the child, perhaps not, but mostly because the poor thing is having an identity crisis, and won't you please give more to gubmint, because it's for children, and drone-blimps matter.
This fucking blimp cost $1.2 Billion from what I understand...Absolutely insane.
Now, now you are being too harsh.
Where is your liberal sense of justice?
The program manager will now be promoted to a higher level of incompetence.
Long live liberal ideology!
Yeah but it created 20 jobs at the Mexican pignata factory for over a week so it provided a trickle down effect.
But the next blimp will have a cool racing stripes on it for only 200 million more.
Blimps are high tech you know! They only started making them since... I don't know... the 18 hundreds? and yet they still catch fire and crash...
Lots of blank space for advertising there.
OK,China...Stand Down
usa's got this.
Houston, the blimp has landed
Slim Pickens was not available for comment
"Slim Pickens was not available for comment"
+100 for the Dr. Strangelove reference
Too funny!
This looks like the field where the plane went down on 9/11!
Maybe MH370 is also somewhere there.
REPORT ON BLIMP SHOOTDOWN IN : 3, 2, 1, (wait for it)
YEARS.
The last useful things we got from the military was some improvement in materials used by industry. Teflon coating was a big one. Better optics (where they were willing to share information for uses such as astronomy). Now, it's mostly just destructive creations of enormous cost.
Not even that. Teflon was accidentally discovered by a scientist at Dupont.
No, it was discoverd by The Justice Department
Sheeeesh.............read the headline and thought this story was about the Fed.
I thought it was gonna be about a Led Zeppelin reunion concert.
And they're floating a stairway, to heaven.
Somebody probably shot it down with a 22.
I say it was a drone.
There's a SciFi movie here: "Drones vs Blimps. Who will be the ultimate surveillance platform?"
hum
and the same country that can't manage a blimp wants to take on russia and china ?
mwahahahah
A thousand foot cable has two ends?
Who knew?
so now we're more vulnerable to the terrists that might attack the east coast tonight? should I gas up and buy milk for the babies?
or just take my Xanax and watch the rethugs debate...decisions
Balloons this large, designed to stay up for months at a time, don't just come down overnight if released. The gas leakage rate is too slow for that.
The only way it could have come down so quickly is if something put a hole (or holes) in it. A big one. Or lots of little ones. Like a fighter aircraft firing cannons or a radar-guided missile.
I'm betting we shot down our own balloon.
well, they did scramble two F-16s but ima gonna wager that it was some "gun nut with a BMG". gotta ban em!
It was a BUK missile.
Unless they had a remote control dump valve, you are right.
How in the hell do you lose a blimp?
I can see these two pieces of shit from where I live. Oh, I feel safer. Not really. I just know one or more of the many local Militery Industrial Suppliers fleeced the system for some more sugar.
'Exceptionalism' at work or a 'Blimp too Far'.....still debating!
We're "Goverened" by Children & Pure Evil Scum Fuck Psychopaths. The MIC is truly a useless piece of shit.
That or just a big bunch of desperate fucks. Either way, handing them billions and telling them that laws don't' apply to them, well, someone is definitely stupid...
MIC=EVIL desperate fucks. They like their money too.
It was heading to the Spratlys because the US needed to show China how shitty China's military prowess really is!
It looks like Hilary's ass.
It looks like a LOT of overweight whales around here that actually believe their hot. Yea baby, hot to a rhinosorous. Time to go back to your roots in Africa honey.
Somebody need that airspace for smuggling?
WAIT! Look at the picture. I see a giant crack! This thing was sabotaged!
That picture doesn't look like the blimp. The blimp is FAR larger. That picture looks like a large weather balloon.
How tall are those trees? 50 to 60 feet? So that balloon might be 60 to 100 feet?
The JLENS blimp is 250 feet long.
TRUE STORY: I was in an unnamed town on the border of Mexico and Tejas working on an undisclosed ranch drilling for oil. The ranch foreman with binocs showed me two houses of competing cartels that were not that far apart north south and about the same distance from the river where we were standing off in Mexico. To the south-East was a blimp station which actually flew that day. Drove over to take a look and started asking the BP parked nearby why it had been on the ground for several days until that particular day. The response was that they were too valuable to fly in heavy winds because they could break the mooring lines. You know, the wind hardly EVER blows there. (sarc) So I asked if that meant the cartels didn't conduct business in high winds ?? Their grins said it ALL.
HOMELAND STUPIDITY
Thanks for sharing!
"HOMELAND STUPIDITY"
But... are they really stupid? Supporting all that nonsense so the MIC can profit enables them to have nice-paying jobs, jobs that allow them to kill brown people (seems to be a favorite pastime).
When you talk to the troops, the border patrol, the Sheriffs, the actual workers you just cannot help but sense that this country's so called leaders are dropping some serious acid or MKULTRA shit because no sane human would be able to exist inside the upper echelons associating and sucking off the Beltway Banditos. BTW, el migra are sick and tired of the betrayal and usurpation of their original "mission". FUCK the Beltway Bubble and all its scumbag enablers. Good news though ! It is Margarita time and the debates are coming on here in the most liberal - douchbag sanctuary - gun grabbing legislative anti freedom shithole formed by the Denver/Golden/Boulder area. I still get 30 round mags in WY or TX. I think the politicians came in from Cali-stan, New York-Marx Schools and plenty of Conneticunt elite who have the only true answers to life itself. Please make mine a double with no limits as I tune in to the Roman American Circus de jour.
Be safe!
Runaway Blimp
I thought it was a story about Victoria Nuland.
The blimp bubble has burst having deflationary consequences followed by a crash. (A more characteristic ZH headline).
I was going to make a smart-ass post until I realized that maybe I'd prefer to have the money go to a useless, f*cked up blimp than a TBTF bank. Quite a choice, huh?
Whoever fat-fingered the mooring on that $1.2B equipment is gonna be peeling potatoes the rest of the week.
Halo, the $330 million airship of the future
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/travel/89253/halo-the-330-million-airs...
What could possibly go wrong?
I am surprised they didn't declare it a terrorist attack to cover their incompetence.
10 the number of those blips needed to have total surveillance of our Southern border.
So why don't we have a dozen on our southern border?
Why do we have any southern border illegal immigration or smuggling?
For sale on Alibaba. Free NOT REGISTERED shipping.
Richard Heene was the first to report is missing, with Brian Williams on board.
It was a secret weapon, as enemy pilots seeing it would of laughed hysterically and lost control of their aircraft.
I wonder if Putin reads ZH.
He pays a bright American educated man to read ZH and report the funny parts.
Runaway "fucking" blimp CONUS?...
Think Washington's got too much on it's plate to really worry!
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/10/27/us-wipes-out-iraq-army-unit-in-n...
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b1b_1446048298
Minor design flaw. The blimp is designed to track Russian missiles but there isn't anything to track the blimp. You would think you could have a pressure sensor on the anchor for the mooring line. Hint: if pressure is 0, blimp is either gone or crashed. I'm sure there is another more complex billion dollar system they will come up with (or were already using).
Mine is more durable.
https://youtu.be/vIJINiK9azc
That's one small blimp for man, one giant blimp for mankind.
We blimped some folks...
It was scrambling to respond to 9/11.
The high tech blimp has become a low brow joke, much the same as those that ordered it deployed.
Does anyone else get the feeling the TPTB are CTB? (circling the bowl)
Thank you. Fuck you all motherfuckers who want to joke about this. That's just what they want from you. How about a little motherfudkin' outrage that there's a god damn SURVELIENCE DRONE ABOVE YOUR CITY!!!!!!!!!
I see this mother fucking thing every day and i think, who the fuck says that our government can send a seeing eye above me 24/7. WHAT THE FUCK? How about a little outrage, or are you all too used to it and can only
joke about it. FUCK YOU MOTHERFUCKERS WHO PUT THIS SHIT IN MY SKY ABOVE ME!!!! And fuck you zero hedge losers that can only joke about it.
I'm pretty sure that most everyone here feels the same as you do.
The problem with everyone is that they point fingers at everyone else when THEY too are involved in the problem that's been created for all of us. You're a taxpayer, you helped fund this fucking piece of shit in the sky above you!
Everyone has a part to play. You're free to take on the part of hitting the headlines as the kook who took out this or some other piece of shit. I'm sure that folks here would be cheering (while the MSM, which we don't give a fuck about, proclaims you as some terrorist [which is, as we all know, upside down from the very terror that you're experiencing from the NSA's hovering over your head day-in-and-day-out). In the end it really is up to you on how YOU want to deal with the terror YOU perceive.
Joking is a form of stress relief. I'm thankful of the many here on ZH who provide some excellent stress relief (and those that can do it with good taste).
This proves beyond a shadow of doubt that the USA is totally fucked up and a total basketcase....we are DOOMED...
Norad told AP reported that the blimp is "on the ground and secure."
From the picture it looks like the blimp is in the tree and broken...
It's not on the ground.
It's not in the hands of terrorists.
Yeah, it's on the ground and it's secure.
Oh shit. My bad, I thought it was a drone. I hear sirens, I gotta go.
Interesting video of it's fateful last moments.Only thing missing is someone saying "oh,the humanity!".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq8wGK9mBgk
In my mind I hear "Riders in the Sky"
as "Condoms in the Sky".
Looks like a broken window.
some how managed to send two f16 fighter jets to a runaway blip but couldnt do shit on 9/11.....................but thats a highly intelegent observation that only a sophisticated individual such as myself could possibly articulate from the common thoughts of the subjects dreaming the american dream...........ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz
Billion dollar blimp, harnesses from Walmart.