Up--and then not

You gotta love America—in what other country in the world could the story of the day be about a military blimp breaking free from its moorings in Maryland and making a run for it to Pennsylvania?

First of all—who even know we still have military blimps? That look a whole lot like the barrage balloons that were deployed during WWII? (They’re called Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, or JLENS, which doesn’t even make sense.)

As if that weren’t bizarre enough, a couple of F-16s were dispatched to follow the blimp’s flight—that would be fighter jets trying trailing a lighter-than-air craft that…drifts. Think the OJ chase but in the air.

Twitter, as you might imagine, went, uh, ballistic. E.g.:

And there were memes about first responders on the ground:

They weren’t that far off the mark, because Jimmy May of the Bloomsburg Press Enterprise got the money shot:

The rogue blimp eventually came down in Pennsylvania of its own accord. There were no fatalities, but it did not go gentle into that good night. It knocked out power to a large number of people in the area.

It turns out that JLENS program costs a lot of money, and has apparently been troubled. So somebody got some ‘splaining to do.

On the up side—there’s an opening for a blimp monitor. No lie; it’s on LinkedIn.

Also—“Rogue Blimp” would be an awesome name for a rock band.