A giant, marauding spy blimp— specifically, a blimp from the Army's Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENSS)— came untethered today and has been marauding over the East Coast for hours, knocking out power lines and terrifying the citizenry with its marauding malevolence.CNN has more, including the safe ending:
A blimp associated with NORAD's surveillance of the East Coast that became untethered from its mooring in Maryland is now on the ground, and authorities have it secured, Pennsylvania State Police told CNN.
The loose JLENSS blimp had been in the air over Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, and caused power outages before it came down, Columbia County Department of Public Safety Director Fred Hunsinger said. Both the Montoursville and Hazleton, Pennsylvania, State Police troops responded, police said. The blimp landed in Montour County. The military took no kinetic action to bring it to the ground, according to the Pentagon, though there is no further information at this point about how it came down. Hunsinger went on to say that there have been no reports of injuries or deaths, but the dragging of the blimp's cable had school leaders taking precautions to protect children as classes began to let out for the day.
"We know right now that, according to the Pennsylvania State Police, the balloon has landed," Jean Lapinski of the Columbia County Emergency Management Agency told Jake Tapper of CNN. "I don't really know exactly what that area looks like, it looks to me, just on a topographical map that we have, that it wasn't a real populated area, so we're hoping that was the situation with it."
There are currently about eighteen thousand people without power in the Bloomsburg area, according to Joe Nixon with PPL Electric. Nixon said they have "reports that the blimp hit power lines in the Bloomsburg area" and that they went to the scene to investigate. Nixon noted it is rainy and windy in the area.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf's office said that Federal authorities and local emergency management personnel have confirmed the aerostat is contained and no longer moving in Montour County.
The state is in touch with local and Federal authorities, including the State Police and National Guard, to secure the aerostat's downed equipment. "These agencies will continue to be on scene to secure the area and ask all residents to remain away from the scene," the office said in a statement.
The military had been planning to scramble helicopters that can land next to the JLENSS when it comes down in order to secure it.
Two F-16s scrambled from the New Jersey National Guard had been tracking the JLENSS aerostat, a Pentagon official said, after the aircraft came loose from its mooring station in Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.
The FAA also tracked the balloon to keep it safely separated from other air traffic.
JLENSS, 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 ten thousand feet in the air. The helium-filled aerostats, each nearly as long as a football field, carry powerful radars that can protect a territory roughly the size of Texas from airborne threats.
Rico says they obviously don't know the definition of 'marauding'...
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