The Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor (JLENS) system program has been savaged by the House Armed Services Committee in its markup of the Defense Department's 2017 budget. The proposed cut in funding —from the $45 million requested by the Army to a mere $2.5 million—may signal the end of a program that was a source of controversy well before one of the program's radar aerostats broke loose and drifted hundreds of miles. But that incident, which caused power outages and property damage as the wayward blimp dragged its broken tether from Aberdeen, Maryland, into central Pennsylvania, was likely responsible for the program finally being brought to heel.

JLENS was originally intended to be a collection of paired radar dirigibles, tethered to the ground while floating at altitudes of up to 10,000 feet. Of each pair, one aerostat would be equipped with a sensitive "look-down" phased array search radar; the other would have a targeting radar for tracking targets and guiding weapons to them.

The system was intended, as the program's name suggests, to defend against submarine-launched and ship-launched cruise missiles, but it was also advertised as a way to spot low-flying aircraft, drones, swarms of small boats, and even some ground vehicles. Raytheon, the prime contractor for JLENS, and the Army tried to dispel concerns that JLENS could be used for domestic surveillance.

But technical issues, cost overruns, and concerns about the limitations of the high-flying aerostats also put the JLENS program on Congress' radar. A Los Angeles Times story in September of 2015 called JLENS a "zombie" program that, after expenditures of more than $2.7 billion, could still not do its primary job—largely because the system had failed to keep even one aerostat aloft for 30 days at a time. When a Florida postal worker flew a home-made gyrocopter onto the grounds of the Capitol, the test JLENS at Aberdeen—which was supposed to detect such low-flying threats—was not operational. And the system had consistently had difficulty tracking and distinguishing targets.

The Army's budget request was part of a three-year plan to reset and restore the JLENS program. However, the budget cut, as written by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mark Thornberry (R-Tex.), essentially puts the program on hiatus. The $2.5 million is enough for the Army to store the aerostats and wrap things up.