18th century technology befuddles Navy military
I guess the Navy’s blimp broke free from it’s tether and took off from Maryland to Pennsylvania yesterday. I found an article that said that the experiment with the big balloon was supposed to end on October 5th. So here we are three weeks later and the craft decides to go AWOL. I guess it came down in Pennsylvania according to Yahoo News.
Two US F-16s fighter jets were scrambled to pursue the so-called JLENS blimp as it floated northeast of Washington at an altitude of about 16,000 feet (4,875 meters).
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said the huge balloon-like structure finally landed in Montour County in Pennsylvania, at around 4:00 pm (2000 GMT.) A military recovery team was en route to the area to collect the runaway aircraft.
The broken tether lines took down power lines as they dragged along the ground. But, hey, it was just country folks who were inconvenienced/endangered. The Navy says that this happens frequently in Afghanistan where they also use the 18th Century technology, they break loos in bad weather and then crash. So you’d think that they would be able to anticipate a problem a little earlier and take precautions. But, like I said, the balloon didn’t go towards any urban areas where the important people live.
Editor’s Note Some of the articles I linked to said that the blimp was Navy – since I wrote the post last night, the media changed some of the stories to read Army so, yes, I made a mistake by not checking the sources again this morning. Sorry, Navy.
Category: Army News
I’m deeply disturbed by the fact that a press release by the Navy to the American public included a metric measurement. This is America, Goddammit! We don’t speak Canadian here!*
*I’m aware of the fact that the military often uses metric and the reasons why. Going for humor here. I know I shouldn’t have to explain that, a certain individual or individuals who shall not be named seem to not only lack a sense of humor of any kind, but also love to explain how any joke of any kind about anything makes us all racist and also makes them better and smarter than everyone else. So now my disclaimer is longer than the joke itself. Like with everything else, all it takes is one asshole to ruin it for everybody.
Navy, or Army?
http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/2015/10/28/f-16s-tracking-blimp-loose/74746356/
“The Great Blimp Chase of 2015 ended Wednesday afternoon when an Army observation balloon went down in Moreland Township, Pennsylvania.”
There’s a secret service called the Arvy. Very, very hush-hush, so much so that even the SV types haven’t used it. So, please, keep it to yourself.
“Secret” service? Hardly.
In warmer states, especially the Deep South and Southwest, there are “Arvy” parks damn near in every town. They do a booming business during the winter. (smile)
And they are often used to calibrate the Halliburton Weather Machine’s tornado setting
It ran out of fuel I would imagine…
There just has to be a turdbathian joke in here somewhere.
There’s been one flying near Naval Air Station Key West for years. USAF operates it. Link: http://www.keywesting.com/key-west-information/things-you-should-know/37-what-is-that-balloon-in-the-sky-over-key-west
There was one tethered out in the West Texas desert near Valentine for years apparently for drug smuggling intervention. Last one I saw was about four years ago which appeared to be tethered at Fort Huachuca. That one could have been for the same purpose or possibly for intelligence training.
The Huachuca aerostat is a radar platform, it can see wayyyyy out across the border. Had one fall out of the sky a few years back
I believe the Huachuca aerostat is also a SIGINT platform.
Fat Albert?
If they’d use a Bosun’s Mate to tie it down, this kind of thing would never happen. Must be the middies’ fault.
A little seamanship there, people!
Which proves that it was an Army balloon!
That’s why it’s not a Navy blimp Ex-PH2 :0
No Bos’n required!!
There was one over Fort Huachuca in AZ as long ago as 1993 when I went through BNCOC. I think it may still be there.
I think it’s actually pretty smart to use this “old tech” to keep the equivalent of a surveillance bird in the air without having to burn all that jet fuel or have a crew operating it.
The bad weather part confuses me – in AZ you could tell when the Spring and Summer storms were coming because they’d reel the Aerostat down for safety. Wondering why they didn’t do that here if they knew bad weather was coming?
It’s still there, except when it gets nasty (just like you described).
This has happened at least twice in Ft. Huachuca/Sierra Vista AZ
I could have sworn those have a self destruct mechanism to keep them from floating too far south, unfortunately last time it happened to go *pop* over a neighborhood rather than thousands of miles of empty desert.
http://cgscammell.blogspot.com/2011/05/tethered-aerostat-radar-system-failed.html
The article I linked too says they (at least the one at Key West) can be remotely deflated.
All of the ones I am familiar with have a radio-wave operated “kill switch”, which essentially opens up a vent and allows the helium to escape. However, even with the vent fully open, it takes several full minutes to deflate to the point where it begins losing altitude. We decommissioned one at COP Sayed Abad when they closed the COP and I was the guy in the manlift that manually removed the deflation hatch ring. It was surprising how long it took for the bag to empty given that it had a 24″ open hole in it.
Yeah, I was in Afghanistan (Bagram) and they had one on the west side of the base. There was a bad storm system moving in & everybody was warned. They were expecting extremely high winds, lightning & possible hail. The numbnuts in charge of the ISR blimp apparently did not get the word & were blind to the humongous thunderhead black clouds moving in.
The blimp got struck by lightning. Not only did it destroy the blimp & all the gear on it, it also fried all the ground-based gear attached to it. Over $22 million (supposedly) down the tubes.
I still say it’s a good asset though. They had three in Kandahar that saved the bacon of a lot of Soldiers out on patrol.
We had two at Shank. One day, one gets loose and drifts into some power lines and catches fire. Of course they call us (Fire Department) and as we are pulling up, we see the thing on fire. I am yelling at my AC “oh the humanity” and it’s replacement was henceforth known as “Hindenburg”.
Are the movements of aircraft such as this recorded using quill pens?
Great story, except for the Navy blimp part.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/aerostat-blimp-owned-army-untethered-article-1.2414819
Army aerostat, but thanks for playing!
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=army+aerostat&qpvt=army+aerostat&qpvt=army+aerostat&FORM=IGRE
I wonder how many of our tax dollars went down the drain when that thing broke loose and crashed? Pity it didn’t go down in DC or some gated community around there, then someone higher up would screech about it!
The cameras and other electronic equipment can survive a crash if its not too rough. That’s really the most expensive part of the whole thing. The blimp is just a blimp, nothing fancy. The cabling can be expensive, but as long as the camera survives, its not too expensive.
One thing leads to another. I looked at the Mil Times article c/o AZtoVA’s comment and saw mention of a WW I American aviator known as the “Arizona Balloon Buster.” He was butter bar Frank Luke. So, I read a few things about Luke that struck a familiar chord. Luke was all balls and skill. He was fearless and hell bent on shooting down enemy aircraft, planes and balloons. Ground troops must have loved him as he ‘busted’ balloon after balloon. Here’s the thing, the familiar chord. Luke was no choirboy. He was not a team guy and did things his way, even if contrary to orders. He faced arrest for this once but went over the superior’s head to have that quashed. Luke’s combat service resulted in a posthumous Medal of Honor. And that’s what I find so ironic. So often, it seems, the ‘bad boys’ in an outfit, the ones who seem to have the greatest difficulty with authority, turn out to be natural asskickers.
Not to mention having a rather large Air Force base named after him there in Arizona.
Perhaps the F35 can replace the zeppelins in addition to replacing the A10.
Ooooooo, that’s gonna leave a mark.
LOL here.
The blimps are apparently faster and more maneuverable
Nah, if it were a navy blimp, the Department of the Navy would already been in talks with some Hollywood studio to turn it into a movie.
On the bright side, we know what one of the stories from the Duffel Blog is going to be about.
Army blimp, I’m sure.
I was crew on an Aerostat ISR platform in Afghanistan, supporting the Army. The one we operated was about 130 ft. in length and we typically flew at 3000 ft. AGL or less. We never lost one on my watch, but we did get one blown out of the sky when those peace loving muslims set off a VBIED right outside the wall of the COP. It was about 1500 ft. AGL at the time and it ruptured and streamed in to the hard ground quickly, destroying all the sensors.
Here’s what I bet happened: I bet they were recovering the Aerostat… lowering it back down to the platform. There was a weather system moving up the East Coast yesterday and they probably wanted the Aerostat on the platform and in the cradle. I bet all eyes were looking up, when they should have had at least one pair of eyes on the tether (kevlar, fiber optic, and copper).
Along the tether, at intervals, are hung pennants for the purpose of making the tether visible to aircraft. In Afghanistan, the pennants we used were hung from a right-angle frame made of aircraft grade aluminum. If the tether is being sucked back into the platform and the winch is not stopped intermittently in order to remove the pennant frames, the tether can be severed or damaged as the hard aluminum frame intersects the hard aluminum fairlead. I saw this happen a couple of times and I heard about it happening at other sites. I’m no rocket surgeon, but it seemed to me the elegant fix to this was to make the pennant frames out of something “less hard” than the tether, i.e. a sacrificial frame… maybe out of, I don’t know… PLASTIC? As per usual, my input fell on deaf ears. Congratulations Army. This is me, staying in my lane. Have a nice day.
This is the military goddammit, don’t go getting all sensible and shit…where would that lead ultimately? Things going smoothly, less stupid shit and more effective use of personnel? We can’t have that…we gotta get rid of guys and gals with tattoos, make sure chicks with dicks have adequate facilities and opportunity, make sure that traitors are comfortably housed for twenty or thirty years instead of being shot dead, important stuff like that…c’mon now what were you thinking?
Didn’t one get loose in Baghdad once? Floated up to the Iranian border and had to be shot down to avoid popping Iranian airspace?
Seriously though–they were awesome.
Though I will tell you, we used them for weather observation….when they both came down we were either getting rain or rockets. 🙂
I am familiar with a story of a tether getting cut at JBad by a helicopter rotor and the aerostat was in danger of intruding Pak airspace. They chased it with a helicopter and tried to shoot it down with rifle fire.
I was on the PTDS system. I think the one in Bagram was a PGSS system… smaller and operated by a different company.
Sorry, guess I screwed up my user name right above. That was me GDC.
No, something is amiss in the ether. Sunspots?
Is your real name Web?
The photo at the top appears to be a manned Navy blimp, not the unmanned aerostat that went missing. Stock photo?
They can stay up a long time which is something some small airplanes cannot do, esp if they are flown without sufficient gas.
BHWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ! ! ! !
They sent F-16s after it? I guess the UK wasn’t quick enough in getting us their helicopters to use to follow it? Since we can’t afford to fly ours?
We had one on our FOB and it got struck by lightning once and went down. It ended up in a village a mile or so away. Some knucklehead Afghan tried to make off with the equipment which weighed more than he did. But it was all recovered. The distance you could see and the things you could see were just amazing.
I’d have to say that this simple piece of technology was an excellent asset for us because of the capability.
After a rip, it was fun to get the new S2 guys and the squad leaders, platoon leaders, and platoon SGTs in to take a look at what kind of support we were capable of providing. I remember one INF LT giving us his personal cell phone number and telling us to call him if we saw him and his guys walking into something. Our platform was built on high ground, so even if we were down for weather we could still keep an eye on the roadside midnight archaeologists on RT. Ohio half way to COP Carwile or more.
Also, contrary to popular belief, those devout muslim guys have roadside sex with fat gals in the dark every once in awhile.
Cheating on their goats? The rats.
Correction. In my post above I mistakenly typed the word “gals”. It would be more accurate to say “gal”.
Yeah, at my age I’m not taking a beating anymore…I’ll fucking shoot you DRT…so call me out when I occasionally wear an old “ARMY” or “11 Bravo” shirt, or have an old field jacket on and I don’t have my 40 year old ID anymore…fuck these clowns.
Apparently my age precludes me from posting this in the right place as well as avoiding a beating….Dagnabbit!!
What may have happened…
That’s funny. Its funny because I can see that happening.
So. They sent two F-16s after it. Just what were they supposed to do once they caught up with the silly thing? Use an AMRAAM on it?
I sure hope they didn’t need to hit the afterburner catch up.
I pictured some ticked off Keystone State deer hunters ventilating the gas bags to bring it down. Of course, the automatic deflator could have woke up and done its job.
Apparently – something/one shot ‘er down :
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/258609-pentagon-army-blimp-actually-still-deflating#