Errant military blimp sparks fighter jet response, power outages in US

The Army is sending a two-person accident-investigation team to Pennsylvania to look into why a military surveillance blimp came loose from its mooring in Maryland and floated away.

After the blimp became unmoored, F-16 fighter jets were deployed into the sky to monitor the unmanned aircraft. The bulbous, 240-foot helium-filled blimp came down near Muncy, a small town about 80 miles north of Harrisburg.

The blimp, fitted with sensitive defense technology, escaped Wednesday from Aberdeen Proving Ground.

The blimp, part of a $2.8 billion Army program, landed in a rural, wooded area in Exchange, Pennsylvania, a community outside Bloomsburg, about 150 miles (240 km) north of the Aberdeen Proving Ground.

About 27,000 customers in two counties were left without power, according to electric utility PPL, and Bloomsburg University canceled classes because of the outage. Electricity was restored to most people within a few hours.

An official says it will take days or maybe weeks to remove a surveillance blimp that broke loose from a Maryland military facility before coming down into trees in the Pennsylvania countryside.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, said earlier Wednesday that its officials were working with the Federal Aviation Administration to ensure air-traffic safety and with multiple agencies “to address the safe recovery of the aerostat”.

The blimp is drifting over Pennsylvania, according to news reports. The wreckage was secured with additional ropes and state police troopers were using shotguns to deflate it Thursday morning, he said. Such blimps have been used extensively in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to provide radar surveillance around US bases and other sensitive sites.

JLENS, which is short for Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, is a system of two aerostats, or tethered airships, that float 10,000 feet in the air.

The craft has a squat body, large fins and a rounded protrusion on its belly. Along the way, its dragging cable knocked out power lines.

While it’s not clear how the blimp got loose, Defence Secretary Ash Carter told reporters “this happens in bad weather” at a Wednesday afternoon press conference.

Raytheon, which produces the aircraft, described the likelihood that the tether would break as “very small” in a post to its website made before the blimp became unmooored.

Raytheon’s 243-foot long JLENS blimp was installed above Maryland’s Aberdeen Proving Ground past year, with the idea of putting the mid-Atlantic under “persistent surveillance”. The loss of the blimp has not weakened those defenses, Miller said.

Jason Jarinko, at teacher at Central Columbia High School in Bloomsburg, says a student gazing out the window alerted him to the wayward aircraft.