Billion Dollar Surveillance Blimps to Launch over Maryland

No it's not a blimp with a goiter, it's the latest government boondoggle! Another wild and crazy way to spend your hard earned tax dollars in the most bizarre ways possible. This time it's the US Army's turn as they're going to launch two massive billion dollar surveillance blimps and station them directly over Maryland. 

Yup, you heard it right, these gargantuan pregnant balloons are going to be sitting up in the sky to protect us against flying white elephants from Congress - no, silly - they're designed to protect us from a potential barrage of enemy missiles that might somehow be launched by evil villains presumably lying in wait off the Atlantic coast aimed at Washington or wherever.

It's the last remnant of an 18-year-long Army project, costing us $2.8-billion, originally designed to warn us against enemy cruise missiles or the like,  but some are saying they'll probably be spending a lot more time instead looking at cars, trucks and the boats of taxpayers who paid for the things.

It's a project called "JLENS," which is an abbreviation for “Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System.” It has high-resolution radar coverage of up to about 340 miles in every direction which means it will be able to see from North Carolina to Massachusetts and thwart those evil do-badders right in their steps.

Things could have been worse. When the things were originally planned, there were supposed to be three dozen of them, but apparently some of them crashed and costs escalated (Really? In Washington?) and they gave up on making any more than just the two prototypes they'd already built.

So, in a couple of days if you're driving up I-95 northeast of Washington, you'll be able to look up in the sky and it won't be a bird or a plane you'll see, but the mother of all blimps silently guarding you day and night at 10,000 feet above the Maryland countryside. They're about 240 feet long, about three times the size of a regular Goodyear blimp, so they'll be pretty hard to miss.