The giant helium-filled JLENS aerostat somehow came untethered at about 12:20 p.m. ET Wednesday at the Edgewood Area of Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland and ascended from 6,600 feet to 16,000 feet prior to deflating and beginning its slow return to ground near Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
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Meant to hover at about 10,000 feet, it was equipped with cruise missile detection radar that, the Army said, would double the range of ground-based detection systems, reaching from upstate New York to just south of Norfolk, Va. Aberdeen Proving Ground is located north of Baltimore.
US military personnel on Thursday were at the landing site near Williamsport where a runaway blimp carrying sensitive Defense Department equipment grounded itself Wednesday afternoon.
Defense officials report that National Guard forces are preparing to fire bullets into an unmanned Army surveillance blimp that crashed in Pennsylvania to speed its deflation.
Still, the blimp caused problems for the people below as it dragged a length of tether and knocked out power lines.
Villa said it was also unknown how the blimp broke loose, and an investigation was underway.
The loose JLENS blimp had been in the air over Bloomsburg and caused power outages before it came down, Columbia County Department of Public Safety Director Fred Hunsinger said.
It was one of two such blimps stationed at Aberdeen as part of a three-year test to determine whether the surveillance blimps would provide improved air defenses for the United States.
A few 26,000 PPL customers lost power in the region, including portions of Schuylkill County.
“The primary wreckage is in Muncy, Pennsylvania in the vicinity of Eagle Road and Muncy Exchange Road”, Davis said.
“That is how we are deflating it”, Villa said.
Randy Gockley, director of the Lancaster Emergency Management Agency, said there were no costs locally associated with the blimp’s lofty passage overhead.
“My understanding is, from having seen these break loose in Afghanistan on a number of occasions, we could get it to descend and then we’ll recover it and put it back up”, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said at the Pentagon as the journey unfolded.
The 240-foot blimp covered about 150 miles before coming down. It enables protection from a wide variety of threats, including manned and unmanned aircraft, cruise missiles and surface moving targets like swarming boats and tanks.
Raytheon s website says the blimps are meant to be tethered to the ground by a “11/8 inch thick super-strong cable”, which should withstand 100 mile-per-hour (60 kph) winds.
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It is tethered to the ground when in use.
