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Army blimp went on a rampage due to lack of batteries
The Pentagon is done looking into what caused the Army's JLENS blimp to drift away and demolish power lines in its path in 2015. While investigators refused to make the full report public, Los Angeles Times has seen the overview and summary they provided to congress staff members. According to the reports, the agency determined what led to the blimp's disastrous rampage, including the fact that its automatic deflator didn't work because it had no backup power source.
Runaway blimp prompts the US to freeze a missile defense program
That US Army radar blimp that ran amok didn't just trigger an internet frenzy... it may have put the brakes on a big military research initiative. Pentagon officials have frozen the JLENS (Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System) program behind the blimp while they investigate what went wrong. The government isn't saying what it might do, but there are already politicians calling for the blimps to be cut. JLENS had already been hanging by a thread ever since 2010, when the Army threatened to kill it -- there are longstanding concerns about both the technology's reliability and its effectiveness compared to conventional aircraft. Don't be surprised if these defensive dirigibles vanish in short order. [Image credit: U.S. Air Force/Tiffany DeNault via Getty Images]
The US Army lost control of a radar blimp
It's the runaway llamas all over again... in airborne form. One of the US Army's missile-detecting radar blimps broke off its tether in Maryland, creating havoc both in the skies (the Air Force even sent fighter jets to track it) and among the many, many internet users following its every move. It eventually drifted over Pennsylvania, and there are reports that it knocked out power lines at a school in the state before coming down. We're still waiting to know the blimp's health, but it's safe to say that the Army will be more than a little red-faced as it looks into what went wrong.
