6 ms·
Unmanned surveillance blimp breaks tether, floats over Pennsylvania
- dang 11y agoAlso https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10466518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10466518 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10466507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10466507.
- Zikes 11y agoI've been enjoying Edward Snowden's comments about this on Twitter. One great retweet by him from @droosien: "Runaway surveillance blimp" is the perfect metaphor for the military/intelligence industrial complex. And the perfect mascot.
- 70seconds 11y agoAnother metaphor for the fear of retribution: Everything on that article is hyperlinked properly except for the tweet from Snowden. Although I do give WP some credit for their original stories on surveillance by NSA/other agencies.
- strictnein 11y agoTo me it looks like the author of the post on the Washington Post just doesn't know how to embed a tweet, or they're used to a system that will properly identify a link to a tweet and embed it automagically.
- motoboi 11y agoWell, I have saw it too many times to believe in errors. Common targets are Snowden related URLs and First Look website. Don't believe me, just remember that the next time you see it.
- Alupis 11y agoIt is suspicious circumstances to say the least. Every image of these JLENS blimps show them anchored with a great many anchor ties, not just one (or a few). However, every report says it just "came loose" or "escaped it's tethering". Conspiracy theory would probably speculate on some new tech being demoed or tested over Baltimore. These things are supposed to be for detecting missiles and high altitude planes, which would beg the question what one was doing blown up and ready to fly in Baltimore.
- jonnybgood 11y ago>Conspiracy theory would probably speculate on some new tech being demoed or tested over Baltimore. It says it right in the article: "It's currently on a three-year test run to see if it can help detect cruise missiles or enemy aircraft from 10,000 feet above ground."
- Alupis 11y ago> It says it right in the article No, the article says the JLENS program is on a three-year test run to see if it can help detect cruise missiles or enemy aircraft from 10,000 feet above ground. That three years is up this year (started program in 2012)... so perhaps they will be decommissioned, or re-purposed. My statement was more along the conspiracy theory line of domestic surveillance tech being tested.
- maxerickson 11y agoStrong winds broke the tether. When it is at altitude, there is ~1 tether.
- Alupis 11y agoAh - the article didn't mention that. Seems like a design flaw really... the single tether. Furthermore, why is it shaped like a blimp with an obvious front-side, when it's designed to be stationary (wouldn't a simple balloon work?)
- 11y ago
- mtgx 11y ago> And the perfect mascot. Almost. It needs the eye of Sauron on it as well.
- toufka 11y agoThe same blimp was just ominously featured in one of the weekly shorts published by the Intercept (the site Greenwald, Poitras, et al. are at and publishing Snowden's leaks). The short is called "The Above" [1], by Kirsten Johnson. It could pass as a great an intro to a dystopian sci-fi movie a la 'District 9'. [1] https://theintercept.com/fieldofvision/the-above https://theintercept.com/fieldofvision/the-above
- rasz_pl 11y agoyou mean like Æon Flux (2005)?
- bariumbitmap 11y agoLink is here for the lazy: https://twitter.com/droosien/status/659439312317059074 https://twitter.com/droosien/status/659439312317059074
- sarciszewski 11y agohttps://twitter.com/bcrypt/status/659448608362663937 https://twitter.com/bcrypt/status/659448608362663937 I find bcrypt's response and selection in hashtag (#BlimpinAintEasy) is the most appropriate.
- peterwwillis 11y agoThe Aerostat has a couple of choice memes as well: https://twitter.com/AberdeenBlimp https://twitter.com/AberdeenBlimp https://twitter.com/search?f=images&vertical=news&q=%40AberdeenBlimp&src=typd https://twitter.com/search?f=images&vertical=news&q=%40Aberd...
- mafuyu 11y agoOf course it's JLENS...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jessaustin 11y agoAn aerostat is literally two things, a balloon and a rope. If they can't keep a rope tied, they should use two ropes.
- maxerickson 11y agoIt's trailing 6,700 feet of cable. That's some rope.
- Alupis 11y agoThis thing is stationary, always. Why not use a couple of ropes for the "just-in-case" scenario (aka. "Just plain good engineering"). Imagine this happened during a deployment in an unfriendly country.
- jessaustin 11y agoOver unfriendly territory I would expect the rope to be the least of this device's problems. While it seems that normal operating altitude would be out of reach of most rifles [0], every time the aerostat was lowered for maintenance it would be completely destroyed by potshots. b^) [0] http://www.closefocusresearch.com/maximum-altitude-bullets-fired-vertically http://www.closefocusresearch.com/maximum-altitude-bullets-f...
- Alupis 11y ago> every time the aerostat was lowered for maintenance it would be completely destroyed by potshots Which has got to mean this device isn't such a great idea in it's current form. These things were designed to be overseas in combat areas guarding against inbound missile strikes on FOB's and the like.
- djrogers 11y agoIt can 'see' up to 340 miles away - these could be deployed dozens to hundreds of miles away from a target area, which would make it a lot harder to take 'potshots' at it. Plus, a bullet doesn't exactly make a big hole (relatively speaking) in something that's 75 meters long - the thing probably leaks more from it's seams than a handful of .30 holes...
- ChuckMcM 11y agoCue Weird Al Yankovich with the tune "Blimps just wanna have fun." :-) I've wondered about the failure mode of aerostats like this one. I found the threat to power lines particularly interesting. If one floated across southern Nevada it could easily catch the lines from Hoover dam to LA. One wonders if the blimp should drop its tether if its GPS detects it has moved more than a mile off station. Or better yet fire up the helium compressor and bring itself down to earth. Both options seem like they could be supported by an modest on board battery (I presume these things are powered through their tether normally).
- strictnein 11y agoThis one has knocked out power. Its cable hit some power lines. https://twitter.com/iduncan/status/659451147955150848 https://twitter.com/iduncan/status/659451147955150848
- ChuckMcM 11y agoit was mentioned in the article as well. My thinking was this; these aerostats have been proposed as part of the southern border program, the powerlines between Hoover Dam and LA typically are carrying 1,100 MW of power. Shorting them out is one of the events which can bring down the western US grid (so a pretty big deal). The distance between the Arizona/Mexico border to Lake Mead is further of course (230 miles, Mexicali => Las Vegas, 80 miles from Aberdeen to Cook County). So probably not a huge threat directly but one of those wierd things I think about.
- elmar 11y ago$2.7 billion blimp on the lose.
- daguava 11y agoBlimp down, tore up in some trees :(
- dingaling 11y agoThought experiment: private individual exercises negligence and permits a 75-metre-long aerostat to break free and drift through controlled airspace. How long before the FAA would have him / her in court? This sort of dual-class system is why the drone registration initiative annoys me. Truly one law for us and another for Them.
- beeboop 11y agoHow long before they are sued by multiple cities and businesses for hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages and lost revenue?
- slantedview 11y agoA drop in the bucket compared to the Billions (yes Billions with a B) they spent to build these blimps.
- brandon272 11y agoNot only did it drift through airspace but it crash landed and caused 35,000 people to lose power and classes to be cancelled at the local university. If it were a private citizen I can imagine they'd be taken to jail.
- djrogers 11y agoIf a private citizen, company, or institution were properly permitted and licensed to have such a blimp aloft and it got loose, there's no way they'd be thrown in jail - that's overly dramatic. There would be civil liability to deal with, which would be handled through lawsuits and insurance companies, but there's no reason for jail. As far as the government having different 'rules' than private citizens - yeah, that happens. Sometimes it's stupid, and sometimes it makes perfect sense. For example, suing the federal government for punitive damages for negligence is generally unproductive. Any damages awarded would only be punitive to the tax paying populace as the source of said money.
- 11y ago
- mazelife 11y agoGood piece in the Baltimore Sun from a few months ago about what a boondoggle this project has turned out to be: http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/federal-workplace/bs-md-blimps-20150924-story.html http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/federal-workplace/bs-md... "But after 17 years of research and $2.7 billion spent by the Pentagon, the system known as JLENS doesn't work as envisioned. The 240-foot-long, milk-white blimps, visible for miles around, have been hobbled by defective software, vulnerability to bad weather and poor reliability."
- gopowerranger 11y agoIt's a test and a research project, as stated in that article. They found 10,000 ways that don't work. Edison would be proud.
- mazelife 11y agoYes, but there are an infinite number of ways it could possibly not work. How long will they go on discovering them? Edison could say something like that because he actually was able to successfully build and market a lightbulb.
- Animats 11y agoRadar blimps are useful. One gave the first warning of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. It wasn't even in service yet; the contractor saw columns of tanks approaching on radar and called it in. It makes good sense to have a good aerial view of the Washington DC area. It's possible that, instead of ordering a remote deflation or shooting it down, the operators decided to let it float until it reached an unpopulated area before bringing it down. It's bad that it dragged its steel tether across power lines, though.
- maxerickson 11y agoIt's supposedly a synthetic fiber, Vectran [pdf]: http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/rtnwcm/groups/gallery/documents/digitalasset/rtn_175001.pdf http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/rtnwcm/groups/gallery/d...
- revelation 11y agoOtherwise known as the stuff in puncture resistant bicycle tires.
- oneJob 11y agoBaltimorean here. Most days these blimps can be seen aloft. They appear less distant than I know they must be (given they are tethered at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds). They are very,,, present. It is unsettling. I lived in NYC for five years where I'm certain I was often under "surveillance" (cameras and what not in public spaces). And during the Baltimore Uprising, we now know there was a FBI/DoJ surveillance plane in the sky. It's just different, in a very bad way, to be able too look up, at any time, and see billion dollar military blimps. Kinda sad.