2024-03-02 06:06:00 ET
It's ba-a-ck!
If you lived on the East Coast in 2015, you probably remember the saga of Raytheon's wandering blimp . A few days before Halloween, a Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS) air defense aerostat that Raytheon -- now RTX Corporation (NYSE: RTX) -- sold to the military broke loose from its moorings and began floating willy-nilly up and down the countryside before eventually being shot out of the sky by Pennsylvania State Troopers armed with shotguns .
It probably made for a fun story back at the police barracks, but it was a bit of a black eye for the Pentagon. The tether that had originally (but no longer) secured the blimp to its location, you see, followed the blimp like a hanging tail, taking out power lines along its route, causing about 18,000 homes to lose power, and rendering $2 million in damages to infrastructure.
For further details see:
Why Is Poland Buying $1.2 Billion in Blimps from RTX Corp?