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 [6]that the blimp is "on the ground and secure."
[7]
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 [8] well part of it...in a tree near Muncy @WNEP [9] pic.twitter.com/epkaSuFsxj [10]
— Nikki Krize (@NikkiKrize) October 28, 2015 [11]
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.
