This is what the blimp looked like before it lit out for the countryside (Raytheon)

A military surveillance blimp came untethered from its home base in Maryland around noon today. A pair of F-16 fighter jets were tracking it as it dragged along a tether that has caused at least one major power outage in Pennsylvania.

Officials are currently trying to wrangle the blimp in a remote section of Pennsylvania:

The 243-foot-long helium-filled blimp is part of a $2.7 billion project called JLENS that has become the poster child for, ahem, runaway military spending and surveillance. This blimp was moored at Aberdeen Proving Ground, a U.S. Army facility in Maryland, until 11:54 a.m. when it lit out for the Pennsylvania countryside, according to The Baltimore Sun.

The Associated Press says that the blimp made it 16,000 feet into the sky. The tether has caused a lot of problems as it drifted, snapping power lines as it passed. The blimp is being blamed for a power outage affecting 20,000 customers in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania.

Authorities were asking anyone who saw it to call 9-1-1. Spokeswoman Heather Roelker told the Sun, “People are warned to keep a safe distance from the airship and tether as contact with them may present significant danger.”

Here’s a shaky video:

It’s not clear how the blimp came loose, though this isn’t the first time JLENS has gone rogue. According to the Associated Press, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said, “My understanding is, from having seen these break loose in Afghanistan on a number of occasions, we could get it to descend and then we’ll recover it and put it back up.” He added, “This happens in bad weather.”

The Los Angeles Times called JLENS a “zombie” program: “costly, ineffectual and seemingly impossible to kill.” The Intercept explained the program this way:

Built by the Raytheon Company, the JLENS blimps operate as a pair. One provides omnipresent high-resolution 360-degree radar coverage up to 340 miles in any direction; the other can focus on specific threats and provide targeting information.

Technically considered aerostats, since they are tethered to mooring stations, these lighter-than-air vehicles will hover at a height of 10,000 feet just off Interstate 95, about 45 miles northeast of Washington, D.C., and about 20 miles from Baltimore. That means they can watch what’s happening from North Carolina to Boston, or an area the size of Texas.

At one point, there were supposed to be nearly three dozen blimps. But after a series of operational failures and massive cost overruns, the program was dramatically scaled back to the two existing prototypes that the Army plans to keep flying continuously above the Aberdeen Proving Ground for three years, except for maintenance and foul weather.

It sounds like New Jersey won’t have to prepare for the blimp’s reign of terror. It’s officially grounded:

Let the memes begin: