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U.S. Military Blimp Loose Over Pennsylvania. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired October 28, 2015 - 15:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[15:32:10] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: And we're back. And again, I cannot believe I'm saying this, but blimp still on the loose here. And we are tracking it. This blimp, the U.S. Military blimp, has sensitive material, U.S. military sensitive radar equipment, et cetera. It's all in this blimp. It is about the size of two football fields in length. It, you know, flung up from its moorings right around lunchtime as I was told from a county official in Maryland around noon. And it has now been spotted, as you can see someone sent in their video here. So it is somewhere above Pennsylvania.

But because this thing, as I was talking to someone from NORAD who knows all about it, says it has a 10,000-foot cable. It's never actually ever supposed to be untethered and flying as it has been, but the cable has been dragging along as this thing has been coming down in altitude. And as a result of that, 20,000 people are without power in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. So that is an issue.

Another issue here as well is the FAA and NORAD are working to keep planes out of the path of this runaway blimp.

So let's go to our Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr first, and then we'll talk to you, David, Soucie, our aviation analyst.

Barbara Starr, what's the latest you have on this thing?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, what we are told, Brooke, is it is now very low to the ground. Those cables are dragging. It may be the people in this area, Columbia County in Northeast Pennsylvania, that will, in fact, have the first word because it will be coming down in their area by all accounts.

I think the thing that people are going to want to realize here, this is unpowered flight. This is basically drifting along with no control of the flight path, no control of where it goes. It drifts essentially with the wind and weather patterns. Since it broke loose shortly thereafter, it's been tracked by f-16s scrambled out of their air station near Atlantic City.

At this hour, what we know is the U.S. military now working, of course, very closely with Pennsylvania National Guard, local police, state police, the governor issuing a statement a short time ago saying everybody is working together to make sure when it comes down to the ground the damage that is caused possibly, the power lines, what the people on the ground may need that are affected by this, all of that now being coordinated between federal, state and local government officials.

For NORAD, for the military, one of the big issues right now first and foremost public safety. They want people to stay away from wherever they see this thing. Stay away from the cables. Their sheer weight and the fact that they are dragging and that nobody can predict where this thing is going can be very dangerous to public safety along with the power outages. But also they're looking at trying to get some National Guard, some police out there so when it finally does come down they can immediately secure the site. It is classified technology. They want to secure the site and scoop up all of whatever comes down - Brooke.

[15:35:00] BALDWIN: OK. David Soucie. Thank you, Barbara.

David Soucie, CNN aviation analyst here. Talking about the blimp, you know, something interesting that I think is noteworthy that the spokesperson for NORAD told me a second ago, as we've all been saying, alright, f-16 fighter jets have been scrambled, that there is a possibility of shooting this thing down? And he said, hang on a second. You know, we actually do have the technology, the capability to remotely deflate this. So do you think that would be their best bet?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: What they're doing right now I would imagine is tracking it to see which way the wind is blowing it. As Barbara said, there's no way to control where this thing goes. It is simply up to the wind and altitude it's flying to tell us where it's going to end up.

But this is not a small piece of equipment. So to remotely deflate it, I'm not familiar with what he's talking about remotely deflating because technically with this particular blimp it's controlled through a cable. So the actual control mechanisms go through that cable. I'm not aware of any wireless technology that would allow it to be remotely deflated unless they just simply pierce it with a missile or some kind of bullets from the f-16s. That's the only way I would know to deflate it.

But there's danger in that, too, because this is not small. It's not like a small floating piece of balloon. This is a very, very heavy piece of equipment. And when it hits the ground, and it will do so suddenly as soon as it doesn't have enough helium inside to maintain its altitude, it will go suddenly down and when it does, we have to be very cautious about where it goes and keep people away, as Barbara said, safety the biggest issue right now.

BALDWIN: I know it is flying low. This is what we're hearing from folks who have actually seen this with their own eyes. But we also -- that said, we know that the FAA and NORAD are apparently working to make sure planes, you know, don't cross its path. I don't know how they even know what its path would be. But, your response to that. What do you think they're doing?

SOUCIE: Well, there is visual flight rules. I'm hoping that the weather is still good. If the weather gets bad, there is going to be problem because there will be airplanes flying without the benefit of being able to see what's in front of them. So in that case, the FAA is probably acting to separate and give it a clear air space to make sure no one is flying in that air space at all.

But it is something that people want to see. So it typically, we've had this happen a couple of times, once in Hawaii with a large balloon that was released there and a blimp that has lost there. And when that happened, it attracted a lot of news media, for example, flying helicopters near it, those types of things. These people need to stay away from this device. It's not inherently dangerous in that it's going to, you know, veer off course suddenly. It's going to follow the weather. So it's predictable in that method.

But as far as like I said, it's going to come down hard so we have to be careful what's below it and stay alert and aware of what's happening above (INAUDIBLE).

BALDWIN: So, in situations like these generally, we're taught, you know, going through breaking news and we quickly have pictures of whatever it is we are talking about, in this case, you know, we don't have any news choppers or any eye on this thing live. And I'm wondering, is that because the FAA has said to, you know, any kind of TV channel, get out of there, we've got to bring this blimp down safely and get out of the air space?

SOUCIE: Yes. Likely they've done an emergency, like we did with 9/11. The FAA was shut down, the entire air space. We have the authority to shut down specifically air ways to modems to all pilots. All the pilots should be aware of those. All of the air traffic control centers are. So that area I would almost assure that that area where the blimp is and could possibly go is shut down to all air traffic right now. They just make sure that all the private pilots and those flights of the airplanes are staying away as well.

BALDWIN: I'm sure once this thing lands, we will have lots of video of that.

David Soucie, you are the best. Thank you so much.

Quick break. We're back on the blimp after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:43:47] BALDWIN: Welcome back to CNN. I want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

We've been reporting on this blimp, about a football field in length. It has become untethered from the Maryland area and is flying somewhere high above the skies of Pennsylvania. Twenty thousand people are without power as a result of this situation. We know NORAD and the FAA are working together to try to make sure no planes come anywhere near. Likely, this is an area in a no fly zone as they try to make sure this thing comes down safely. This is a military blimp. There is classified information on board. So we know state, local, federal authorities are all tracking this thing and want to make sure that if and when it does finally come down it doesn't injure anyone on the ground. And we want to make sure they get that classified, sensitive material as soon as possible.

So I have with me still lieutenant general Mark Hertling who has pretty interesting expertise on these JLENS aerostat blimps having been in Iraq and Afghanistan.

General, you were telling me that you had 17, I believe was the number, 17 of these particular blimps and three of them at one point in time became untethered. And it took you seven hours to deflate one of them. Can you tell me about that process?

[15:45:08] LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING, CNN MILITARY ANALYST (on the phone): Well, yes, Brooke. We actually didn't deflate it. We just monitored it, much like what is going on right now, and watched it float. And then in that particular case, the forward operating base it came from was near Baghdad, and the doggone thing floated all the way up toward Mosul, a little over 150 miles away, until it finally came down. And luckily, it came down in our territory and we could recover it.

But we had to monitor it. We were watching it on radar. We had helicopters approaching it and, just like the f-16s are doing now. Make no mistake, those f-16s are not going to shoot it down, as David Soucie said. They're more than likely just clearing air space for the rest of the northeastern corridor so no civilian airplanes crash into this thing.

And by the way, these things were not loved by our army aviators or the air force guys as well because they're very difficult to see at night when they're on they're tethered. When they're not loose they're floating around much like a balloon would be so you don't really know where the wire is holding it to the mooring station. So the army helicopter pilots would always complain about these things.

But the army infantry guys were really interested in them because it gave really good intelligence about enemy forces on the ground. So it as a mixed bag. But they do break loose as this one has.

The information on board the actual JLENS, the camera or whatever it's carrying, in and of itself it doesn't have any classified information. But it is a device that you certainly don't want to show the capability of because the lens and the ability of the optics can see, as I said earlier, a great distance.

BALDWIN: Got it.

HERTLING: So it's a good piece of kit. And when it does come down, as David Soucie says, it will come down like a very heavy balloon wherever it lands. So that in and of itself could be dangerous as well. When it land it's going to land, and it's not something you want to fall out of the sky. It will come down very slowly.

BALDWIN: And talking to the sole source I know you were listening, you know, from NORAD, he was saying to me that they do have the ability to remote deflate, which I know is different from the blimps that you dealt with in Iraq. And he was also telling me that it's this 10,000-foot cable that keeps this thing normally tethered to the ground there in Maryland. And it's because of this cable that's dragging over some of these power lines leaving 20,000 people without power. But when I think of tether, I think of almost cloth. But clearly this is such a massive sized blimp, what is it, like a metal cable?

HERTLING: It is exactly a metal cable. I mean, these things, first of all, will weigh a couple hundred pounds. And when you're talking about the force of wind pulling it around, that cable that's tethering it to the mooring station has got to be pretty strong. So I don't know exactly the dimensions of the cable, but it's got to be at least 1 or 2 inches in diameter, and it's an iron cable. It is not a cloth tether.

These things are heavy, and they've got to be moored securely. So when you're talking about something breaking away, it could break from the ground station itself. It could break from the nose of the aircraft. And there's only one of the cables attaching to the -- at least ours. I'm talking about my personal experience. There was one cable attached to the nose of the aircraft, and it would float based on how far -- how much you reeled it in or how much cable you gave it.

So all of those things are factors, and that cable that's holding this thing, which appears to be bigger than the ones we used, probably by twice the size. It's got to be pretty heavy. And again, you're right, it's going to short out electrical cables as it travels over, if it's dragging that cable. It could cause damage because it is a very heavy cable. But the thing that really concerns me more than anything, even though power is out to quite a few people, is the aircraft that might come into this air space. That's what the f-16s are doing, just clearing the air corridors around there as David Soucie said.

BALDWIN: Got it. So important to have the f-16s scrambled in a situation like this. And hopefully no one is injured and this eventually just comes to a standstill on the ground there somewhere perhaps in Pennsylvania in a rural area.

General Hertling thank you so, so much.

Speaking of Pennsylvania, I actually have someone on the phone with me, Carm Dipippa (ph).

Carm, can you hear me?

CARM DIPIPPA, PENNSYLVANIA (on the phone): Yes, I can.

BALDWIN: All right. So you are there in Pennsylvania. You have had eyes on this blimp. How recently -- how far up was it?

DIPIPPA: It was -- it was right above the school. It was actually caught on the roof for a while. And then it got loose and flew away. But it did knock power out here in Columbia County.

[15:50:08] BALDWIN: So do you have power?

DIPIPPA: No. BALDWIN: You don't have power. We're looking at this picture. I'm

assuming this is the one you sent us. So it was stuck. So this cable that we were talking so much about this cable or this tether, so it somehow what wrapped its way around a piece of school and was stuck for a while?

DIPIPPA: Yes. It was stuck for just a little bit at the top of the school. The first picture is actually when it was stuck on the school and then it flew away. It, you know, took off. But, yes, just for a little bit it was stuck there. And it's, you know, the power did go out. It still is out.

BALDWIN: My goodness. So were there a bunch of people just standing around on the ground with cell phones looking toward the sky?

DIPIPPA: Yes. Well, pretty much. The students were still in the room, it was all dark. And you know, there was a little bit of chaos because of what happened. But we were out there with our cell phones taking a picture of it.

BALDWIN: Were kids still in the school?

DIPIPPA: Yes, they were. Because we didn't know what had happened at that point what was going on, so we just kind of kept them where they were until we found out what was going on. When we realized we weren't going to have power they told us maybe not until later tonight. (INAUDIBLE).

BALDWIN: And let's see. We've talked about altitude, how it's sort of decreasing in altitude. It sounds like it is deflating. Could you tell that with your own eyes?

DIPIPPA: No, I couldn't tell that. I just know that when it came unattached from the school it flew off into the distance. Didn't see it, you know, losing altitude at that point.

BALDWIN: And how rural is where you're calling me from, from the Bloomsburg area in Pennsylvania in case this blimp does decide to come down in your area.

DIPIPPA: There's a lot of farmland, but there's a lot of houses. So in our area here, you know, we had a little bit of space if it were to come down. But it didn't come down. There's neighborhoods and houses around that it could have come down on.

BALDWIN: OK. Carm Dipippa, thank you so much.

You saw the blimp stuck on a school for a little bit of time there in Pennsylvania. Don't have power. Carm, thank you so much. Hopefully that power will be restored soon enough for you, but thank you so much for calling in. I appreciate it.

We're going to take a quick commercial break. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Back on this untethered blimp next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [15:56:49] BALDWIN: Couple minutes remaining, I want to stay here on this untethered blimp somewhere in the skies over Pennsylvania. Twenty thousand people without power because of this metal cable. This 10,000-foot metal cable that normally tethers it to the ground in Hartford County has been dragging and hitting not only power lines. We just spoke with a woman in Bloomsburg, P.A., who said it hit and stayed upon a school for a little while. Also effecting flights, air space in the area. So I have Mary Schiavo. She is still with me, our CNN aviation expert/specialist.

First, just talk to me about how this issue here is affecting people's flights or planes in the northeast area.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, the FAA never did issue any official orders vacating the air space, but they worked in conjunction with NORAD to watch it, to monitor it and to divert traffic around it. But it could be very dangerous.

You know, this happened about a year ago with a Budweiser, I don't think it was owned by Budweiser, but a Budweiser beer blimp got away and the FAA had to do the same thing. They had to clear traffic from it and it was headed towards Canada. So what they did was monitor, keep traffic away from it, but they didn't actually issue any orders keeping flights on the ground or closing airports or anything. So they seem to have managed the traffic fine around it.

BALDWIN: What about investigation wise? I mean, eventually probably sooner rather than later this blimp is going to land. And when it does, what does the investigation look like?

SCHIAVO: Ordinarily, for example, if it was a private or commercial blimp, you know, like the beer blimp, the FAA and national transportation safety board would have jurisdiction over the investigation. However, since it's a defense department program being run by defense department contractor and deals with NORAD which is surveillance of incoming cruise missiles, aircraft, hostile flights or even, you know, flights in the D.C. area or four locations around the country, this will be investigated by the defense department. And they will issue the report.

And I think it will be a black eye for the contractor because this program has been so controversial. It was actually considered one that they just couldn't kill. And I don't know, this might be the death nail for it. I don't know. But it will be controversial as to whether it's worth doing this program anymore. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but that will all be part of the investigation.

BALDWIN: You know, several people have mentioned the controversial nature of this and add to that also the, you know, sensitive military intelligence that is on board this blimp. I'm just wondering does this concern you what's happened here. Or do you think this is just an absolute fluke accident one-off?

SCHIAVO: No because it's happened before. Like I said, I mean, a beer blimp last year. They do get loose. Tethered blimps particularly in weather what it was doing up in bad weather is a question again for the investigators --

BALDWIN: But military. That's what makes this different.

SCHIAVO: That's what makes it different, but these things come loose. It's happened before. Look, blimps have been used including for military intelligence all the way back. So there are many instances where they get loose. The question is they're being deployed here over the United States of America and we're very populated. And so I think that will be part of the question. And also if the intelligence is good enough to warrant the risk. But --

BALDWIN: Got it. Mary, forgive me. I have to cut you off. I'm up against "the LEAD." But I thank you so much for being with me this entire two hours. Thank you for being with me.

"The LEAD" starts now.