I suppose it has a radio link to release helium.
One news story I read a while back claimed a helo got close enough to one of the runaway balloons from Cudjoe Key to send a signal to deflate. I've heard the sea story from both ex-Air Force and Navy coworkers about the time they were sent out to shoot down 'Fat Albert' floating just over the waves.
These aerostats seem to get loose a lot over the years. If you've ever lived in Florida it's a staple of local news.
Here are some of the incidents chronicled in a Key West newspaper article:
Fat Albert has popped in and out of headlines over the years it's been flying guard. Most recently, in 2007, three people were killed after their private Cessna plane hit one of its cables and crashed.
In January 1991, the blimp broke free of its tether while being lowered for maintenance and drifted over the Everglades before crews activated a remote-control pressure valve.
The program suffered a series of crashes between March 1993 and February 1994, when high winds claimed three aerostats, according to Citizen reports.
The Miami Herald reported in April 1989 that the blimp broke free while it was being lowered due to inclement weather only to crash into the Gulf of Mexico about a mile north of Cudjoe Key.
But the most dramatic Fat Albert story may well be that of the four lobster fishermen who were taken on a wild ride when they hooked a runaway blimp to their 23-foot fishing boat in August 1981, according to Miami Herald reports.
Fat Albert lifted the boat and its 175-horsepower engine into the air before dumping the fishermen in the water near the Mud Keys.
That Fat Albert was finally shot out of the sky by Air Force F-4 Phantom fighter jets using air-to-air missiles.
Jaime Benevides Jr., the captain of that fishing boat, told the reporter he was trying to help the Air Force by towing Fat Albert back to its rightful roost. He was otherwise happy to have his boat back, as well as his Evinrude outboard, after the ordeal.
"It cranked right back up," Benevides said.
Keys icon deflated in name of progress | KeysNews.com
The JLENS aerostat has been a multi-billion dollar boondoggle from the gitgo it seems:
Unknown to most Americans, the Pentagon has spent $2.7 billion developing a system of giant radar-equipped blimps to provide an early warning if the country were ever attacked with cruise missiles, drones or other low-flying weapons.
After nearly two decades of disappointment and delay, the system — known as JLENS — had a chance to prove its worth on April 15.
That day, a Florida postal worker flew a single-seat, rotary-wing aircraft into the heart of the nation’s capital to dramatize his demand for campaign finance reform.
JLENS is intended to spot just such a tree-skimming intruder, and two of the blimps were supposed to be standing sentry above the capital region. Yet 61-year-old Douglas Hughes flew undetected through 30 miles of highly restricted airspace before landing on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol.
At a congressional hearing soon afterward, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) demanded to know how “a dude in a gyrocopter 100 feet in the air” was able to pull off such an audacious stunt.
The rotary-wing aircraft that Douglas Hughes landed near the U.S. Capitol on April 15. “Whose job is it to detect him?” Chaffetz asked.
It was JLENS’ job, but the system was “not operational” that day, as the head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, Adm. William E. Gortney, told Chaffetz. The admiral offered no estimate for when it would be.
...Army leaders tried to kill JLENS in 2010, The Times learned. What happened next illustrates the difficulty of extinguishing even a deeply troubled defense program.
Raytheon mobilized its congressional lobbyists. Within the Pentagon, Marine Corps Gen. James E. “Hoss” Cartwright, then vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came to JLENS’ defense, arguing that it held promise for enhancing the nation’s air defenses.
At Cartwright’s urging, money was found in 2011 for a trial run of the technology — officially, an “operational exercise” — in the skies above Washington, D.C.
Cartwright retired the same year — and joined Raytheon’s board of directors five months later. As of the end of 2014, Raytheon had paid him more than $828,000 in cash and stock for serving as a director, Securities and Exchange Commission records show.
http://graphics.latimes.com/missile-defense-jlens/