Well, I did. A year ago I wrote a tongue in cheek piece on blimps, noting that, every ten years or so, we’re told that “they’re coming back.” And then, a year or so later, we’re told “not yet.”
The latest “not yet” misadventure has cost the U.S. tax payer $2.7 billion, as anti-missile blimps (yes, anti-missile blimps) posted outside Baltimore, Md. proved to be a complete dud, as the Baltimore Sun reports:
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.
In videos and news releases, Raytheon Co., the Pentagon’s lead contractor for JLENS, has asserted that the system is “proven,” “capable,” “performing well right now” and “ready to deploy today.”
But JLENS is a stark example of what defense specialists call a “zombie” program: costly, ineffectual and seemingly impossible to kill.
The cream of the jest, unfortunately, is that a Pentagon flop of only $2.7 billion has been totally ignored outside the Baltimore area, where, of course, you can actually see the damn things.
