why i was asking what the blimp looked like. i wondered about the tethers. he said right around the tree line and that if there are outages being reported by barbara in terms of electricity, and the fact that it s decreasing in altitude, this thing eventually has to hit the ground. it does. and actually it s probably fortunate that it is down and going to hit the ground because those tethers aren t like ropes. they re heavy cables, designed to keep this aloft because this is part of the system that was designed to give the united states information about incoming air traffic, incoming missiles, et cetera. and it was down, remember the guy who tried to land on the capitol grounds last spring. sure do. it was down that day, a highly controversial program. hasn t worked well. but it s very sensitive and they ve got to recover the equipment. so if it did can get on the ground without harming anyone, it s very heavy because it s radar equipment. it s not like a balloon. it s got a lot
enhanced surveillance capability within the national capital region. it was designed to provide us about a 340-mile over the horizon look at incoming air traffic, high speed and otherwise, and it also provided us a 360-degree view, which in the past we did not have. now, that said, the integrated air defense system within the national capital region is very robust, has been upgraded and continually tweaked since 9/11, and, brooke, i can assure you that the national capital region through the norad integrated air defense system is in place working and will continue to provide defense of united states and the national capital region. i am sure. i do not doubt that. mike, how often does the blimp get released to fly?
aerospace command has confirmed that this blimp called jlens came loose from its tether rope at aberdeen proving grounds a military facility just north of washington, d.c., this morning. it was on a tether. this is a system they re testing out there. it s full of radar equipment to test its ability to identify unidentified aircraft, cruise missiles, but it came loose. now this blimp filled with helium is flying north. it is now over pennsylvania, we are told. two f-16s in the air. they were scrambled out of their air station near atlanta ick city, new jersey. the military not saying yet whether those f-16s are armed because right now the u.s. government is trying to figure out what to do about this. i talked to an official tracking this whole situation just a few minutes ago, and he said we are trying to figure it out.
here. this is not 60,000 where those weather balloons go. across northeast maryland into pennsylvania, where in pennsylvania we re not sure. extreme northern new jersey and then possibly extreme southeastern new york state. maybe make its way into parts of new england and connecticut, massachusetts. but if you follow the wind, they go across the northeast and then get into canada maritime. this is where they may decide if they want to shoot the system down and let it fall to get into a safe zone. but think about this. 16,000 feet, all the airports across this region are going to be high alert. it will give fits to air traffic controllers at 16,000 feet across teterboro, laguardia, jfk, up toward logan. so it will be interesting to find out exactly where this is. but again, we re not sure what the material is, that mean as lot if they decide to let it go to several thousand feet up in the air. my goodness, i hope this doesn t affect people flying anywhere in the northeast area.
what a mess! spider marks, major general spider marks, i ve got you now. let me try it again. we re talking about potentially shooting this thing down. how? from the f-16s? well, frankly, the short answer is sure, you could. but the issue is these jlens have kind of a self-correcting and self-feeling system. they were designed we first put these things in place when we were in baghdad so we could tether them to the ground and have a 24/7 persistent hang from the bottom of these things various censors that would give us a good sense of the signals profile on the ground or we could take some great imagery, some good pictures, et cetera. so they re a rñally great intelligence collector. that s what they reot used for so the key thing is, if you want to shoot this thing down,kohlço wantv.# to try to also primari recover the intelligence