The "Rouge Blimp" Story

Granddaughter Camille #18 heading down the field.

It was an ordinary day.  Sitting along the sidelines at a recreational park field on an early Sunday afternoon in Aberdeen, Maryland watching my granddaughter play her third game of lacrosse.  Her team had won one game, tied the next and had a commanding lead in this, the third of four games her youth team will play today in a weekend tournament.  

Quick photo I got before the blimp disappeared into the clouds.

As Carol looked at the distant sky she said to me, "Look, there's a blimp up there.  I wonder if they are going to use it for an NFL game this afternoon or evening."  Then I sighted it and snapped a photo with my camera.  The white thing was rather minute and looked more like a balloon shaped like a fish than what you would picture as the traditional blimp.  Then, I saw a second one sneaking in and out of the clouds high above the landscape in the distance.  

This Internet photo shows the size of the blimp.

Never got a second shot before the clouds covered the blimps.  Didn't think anything more about it until a few days ago when I saw on TV that an unmanned Army surveillance blimp broke loose from its moorings in Maryland and floated over Pennsylvania for hours.  Took a better look at the TV screen and said to my wife, "That's the balloon we saw on Sunday while we were watching Camille play lacrosse.  One of the two broke loose at its mooring and came our way."  The 250-foot long high-tech balloon broke free and climbed to 16,000 feet before long.  

From the Bloomsburg Newspaper showing the blimp.

On board the balloon was sensitive electronics that could be used to detect a missile that may be aimed and deployed at nearby Washing- ton, D.C.  It is the same type of blimp that was used on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan as well as in drug surveillance in the Caribbean to intercept drug runners.  The two blimps had been tethered above Aberdeen Proving Ground for testing.  Many residents feared they had cameras to watch their movements on the ground which was denied by the Army.  

Internet photo showing the blimp in the trees.

Well, shortly after the balloon broke its tether, two F-16 fighter jets were sent to tail the blimp as it moved northward into Pennsyl- vania.  May have been a bit overkill, but I guess they could have shot it down if necessary.  After about three and a half hours and numerous neighborhood power outages due to the 5,000 foot metal chain tether downing power lines, shotgun-wielding authorities fired over 100 shots at the blimp and brought it down in the Pennsylvania countryside near Muncy, a small town north of nearby Harrisburg.  Authorities were able to recover sensitive electronics, but it will take weeks to remove the blimp from the rugged countryside.  It was reported on TV that the blimp was part of a $2.8 billion Army program called the Joint Land-Attack Cruise Missile Elevated Netted Sensor System or JLENS.  The second blimp, still at Aberdeen, will be grounded until it's mooring is deemed capable of holding the blimp.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.