Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Remember the Hindenburg

When we go to Seaside Park, at least what little is left of it, we pass by Lakehurst the site of the Hindenburg explosion. I guess the Navy got the idea that big balloons can be a bit difficult to deal with. Now perhaps the Army did not get the message. On the loose is a power grid killing monster. We don't need a George Will to tell us of the threat, we have developed and now deployed out own such weapon, and it is slowly drifting across central Pennsylvania wiping out the grid.

Perhaps we need some hunters out there, perhaps that was the reason for the Second Amendment, to get those white whales down and stop the power outages!

As ArsTechnica reports:

One of the two tethered aerostats that make up the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS), has broken loose from its moorings and is now drifting over Pennsylvania. Two Air National Guard F-16 fighters are monitoring its movements, but the trailing tether has already taken out power lines in Pennsylvania, causing blackouts in Bloomsberg as it got closer to the ground. JLENS' twin aerostats are (or were) supposed to provide airborne early warning and targeting of low-flying airborne threats coming in from the Atlantic, covering a radius of 300 miles with their look down search and targeting radar. They have been the subject of much controversy because of the cost of the program; a recent Los Angeles Times report called the $2.7 billion dollar project delivered by Raytheon a "zombie" program: "costly, ineffectual and seemingly impossible to kill."

Yes indeed, just in time for Halloween, a Zombie Project! Let's see who get reassigned, any guesses.

Oh and yes, I think there is another debate tonight. Any guess who will focus on this?

Oh yes and one more thing! CNN keeps bemoaning that it may explode. It is Helium stupid, a Noble Gas, inert, not Hydrogen! The worst that will happen is a few folks will talk like Donald Duck for a short while! What has happened to our educational system. And also, not radio like with the balloon, even amateur aircraft fliers have such a link to get control. Even the drones on Amazon! They put $200 M of electronics and no "phone home". Is this just a Halloween joke or for real?