Army sending team to look into wayward blimp

The 73-meter helium-filled blimp, which had two fighter jets on its tail, came down near the small town of Muncy.

Fitted with sensitive defense technology, the radar-equipped blimp escaped from the military’s Aberdeen Proving Ground around 12:20 p.m. and drifted northward, climbing to about 16,000 feet, authorities said.

State police were using shotguns Thursday to deflate a wayward surveillance blimp that broke loose in Maryland before coming down into trees in the Pennsylvania countryside.

The massive Army blimp that broke free from its mooring and drifted from Maryland to Pennsylvania is “actually still deflating”, a Pentagon spokesman said Thursday. Reports said that the surveillance blimp is now secured after landing in central Pennsylvania.

The high-tech blimp – which is created to detect missile attacks – caused electrical outages for thousands of residents as its tether hit power lines along its three-and-a-half-hour journey.

Villa said all options are being considered for how best to remove it. He added that there was no way to tell if the equipment was still functional until investigators have inspected it.

It’s not immediately clear how the blimp came loose.

A military blimp, similar to the one that floated free from Aberdeen Proving Ground Wednesday. “We lost our power where we live”, said Melanie Knox, of Muncy, Pennsylvania.

“The terrain is extremely steep”, he said.

Thursday morning, recovery operations commenced for the blimp, which is called the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS) fire control radar system aerostat.

The tail section and detached tether portion of the blimp that caused an aerial “manhunt” on Wednesday have now been removed from the crash site, an official said. It covered approximately 150 miles in about 3½ hours.

Randy Gockley, director of the Lancaster Emergency Management Agency, said there were no costs locally associated with the blimp’s lofty passage overhead.

The system is meant to address a danger that is hard to defend against, said military aviation analyst Caitlin Lee: small, low-flying threats near Washington D.C., such as a cruise missile launched off the coast or a small unmanned aerial vehicle.

The craft even knocked out power to the State Police barracks at Bloomsburg before settling in a wooded hollow, where it was swiftly cordoned off while military personnel began arriving to retrieve it, State Police Capt. David Young said.

The JLENS aerostat can fly at an altitude of up to 10,000 feet above sea level, according to the NAADC.