An unmanned Army surveillance blimp broke loose from its ground tether at a military base in Maryland on Wednesday and drifted over central Pennsylvania as two Air Force fighter jets tracked it. The blimp’s long tether snapped power lines, causing outages.
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The bulbous, 240-foot helium-filled blimp eventually came down in at least two pieces near Muncy, a small town about 80 miles north of Harrisburg, as people gawked in wonder and disbelief at the big, white, slow-moving craft.
State police confirm the runaway blimp that floated over our area came down before 4 p.m.in Montour County.
Update 2: NORAD says that the blimp has descended “near the ground”, which we’ll assume is just poor wording as other outlets and people on Twitter are reporting it’s landed. The blimp can see over 300 miles in every direction, so it can see any incoming enemy planes.
About 18,000 electric customers near Bloomsburg, Penn. are out of power, according to PPL electric spokesman Joe Nixon.
Pennsylvania authorities closed off the crash site so that none of the 7,000-pound ship’s high-tech radar and electronic equipment were compromised, a Homeland Security official said.
A 242-foot USA military blimp broke loose yesterday, floating from Maryland to Pennsylvania while pulling more than a mile of cable with it and knocking out power to about 30,000 residents in Pennsylvania, Reuters reports.
The planes monitored the blimp before it came down at around 4pm.
Bloomsburg Universitywas forced to cancel classes for the remainder of the day due to a lack of power.
“Personnel are responding to a tether break at the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Netted Sensor System (JLENS) location on the Edgewood side of APG”. “This happens in bad weather”.
According to eyewitnesses, the tether that trailed behind the escaped balloon raked across the Pennsylvania countryside and flew over townships, ripping through power lines.
But defense officials have still said they need more money, protesting the budget “sequesters” that have slashed tens of billions of dollars.
It is also unclear how the blimp detached from the mooring, a matter which is being looked into by investigators.
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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”.
