As The Baltimore Sun noted in a devastating investigation last month, the blimps haven’t really performed anywhere near as hoped:

After 17 years of research and $2.7 billion spent by the Pentagon, the system known as JLENS doesn’t work as envisioned. The 240-foot-long, milk-white blimps, visible for miles around, have been hobbled by defective software, vulnerability to bad weather and poor reliability … JLENS is a stark example of what defense specialists call a “zombie” program: costly, ineffectual and seemingly impossible to kill.

In its most high-profile failure, the system failed to spot the postal worker who flew an gyrocopter onto the Capitol lawn in 2014, just the sort of incursion the blimps were meant to spot.

In an FAQ posted online, Raytheon assured readers that it was unlikely the aerostats would come untethered: “The chance of that happening is very small because the tether is made of Vectran and has withstood storms in excess of 100 knots. However, in the unlikely event it does happen, there are a number of procedures and systems in place which are designed to bring the aerostat down in a safe manner.”

The escaped aerostat has launched many a mocking tweet, and even gotten Edward Snowden’s attention:

Remember the $2.7b giant surveillance blimps? Something went wrong, and it's on the loose. https://t.co/Oa7gqI14Hm pic.twitter.com/Db6T8VWURq — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 28, 2015

Blimps may seem harmless and silly, but it’s hard out here for a blimp. The JLENS’s struggles notwithstanding, airships have a long, noble, and sometimes tragic history serving U.S. national defense. Following German deployments of Zeppelins against Britain in World War I, the U.S. began toying with rigid airships in the 1920s. The U.S.S. Shenandoah flew for two years before crashing in a storm in 1925, killing 14.

In 1921, the Navy’s smallest blimp broke loose and went on what The New York Times described as a “rampage,” drifting for more than three hours at a height of 5,000 feet before peacefully coming down on a farm in Scarsdale, New York.

The U.S.S. Akron, which flew in the 1930s, was the world’s largest helium airship and the first flying aircraft carrier; it could launch an airplane. (The ship was named for its hometown in Ohio, where Goodyear built it. The tire company still builds its signature blimps there, though the newest is actually a semi-rigid airship.) Here’s the Akron launching a plane during tests:

U.S. Navy

But the Akron crashed in 1933, killing 73 of 76 crew members. During World War II, the military made more than 150 more blimps in Akron, which were used as effective escorts for ships, because they could spot submarines.

Now, however, the hunter has become the hunted. Rather than assisting the military in stopping attacks—whether from submarines or from cruise missiles aimed at Washington—NORAD has scrambled two F-16s to track the airship as it drifts away from Aberdeen, headed toward Pennsylvania, perhaps confused about how to get to the World Series in Kansas City. Who’s laughing at the blimp now?