AFP

He urged a coordinated effort by India and Pakistan to fight the terror groups, but such cooperation is likely to be a tough sell.

The groups were hoping to spark a conflict between India and Pakistan, or provoke instability in Pakistan, he said.

“It’s dangerous to single out any one of these groups and say, ‘If we can beat that group, that will solve the problem,’ because they are in effect a syndicate of terrorist operators intended to destabilise this entire region,” Gates said.

India is spending billions annually on US-made military hardware, although Gates said current agreements prevent India from being able to buy some US weaponry or technology.

“It is not unreasonable to assume that Indian patience would be limited were there another attack,” he said.

Gates arrived in India on Tuesday and met with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other top officials. He urged them to finalise long-pending security cooperation agreements between the two countries, he said.

India blames the November 2008 attack on Mumbai, which killed 166 people, on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group. Following the assault, India froze talks with Pakistan that had been aimed at resolving the long-running dispute over Kashmir, which both countries claim in its entirety.

He linked Taliban militants operating along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border with Lashkar-e-Taiba extremists accused of orchestrating the 2008 terror attack on the Indian city of Mumbai, saying both groups worked under the umbrella of al-Qaeda.

The neighbours have fought three wars and remain wary over each other’s intentions. Pakistan is unhappy with India’s significant influence in Afghanistan, and India accuses Pakistan of harbouring terror groups plotting attacks here.

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From here on out, it will only get bigger, louder, and more outrageous. But tonight, amidst the vast emptiness of a Burning Man only partially pieced together, some beauty is quietly on display.

BLACK ROCK CITY, Nevada–It’s Thursday night, three days before the gates officially open to Burning Man, but already a lot of people have arrived here for set-up. The arts festival is quickly taking shape.

All's quiet at Burning Man--for now

On Thursday night, three days before the gates open to Burning Man, the Man is up and looking fine atop his forest of wooden, sculpted trees, but is still roped off.

The Raygun Gothic Rocket ship, a 1940s-era spaceship, which has a planned launch a week from Friday at Burning Man.

On this night, it’s oddly quiet on the Black Rock desert. Oddly because if you’ve ever been to Burning Man, you’re used to nights being filled with noise of all kinds–music, explosions, screaming, laughing–coming from every direction. But because the only people here right now are helping to build things–art projects, theme camps, public infrastructure–people are plumb tuckered out.

(Credit:Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Airborne Laser sticks to test regimen

ABL has to keep all of the powerful laser’s optical components perfectly positioned as the aircraft vibrates and flexes during flight…Since we were unable to fly the kind of large concrete pads used to hold a ground-based laser’s optics in place, we had to isolate the COIL’s optics from the structure but also maintain alignment. So the team developed an optical bench isolation system that isolates disturbances caused by normal aircraft operations while maintaining alignment to the gain medium, or the source of a laser’s optical power. It’s like an automobile’s ‘smart suspension’ that keeps the car riding smoothly at the same level over a bumpy road.

The core of the existing ABL is a chemical oxygen iodine laser, or COIL, and it’s hardly man-packable machinery. The COIL system itself takes up the back half of a modified 747-400F, while the front half of the jumbo jet is given over to the beam control/fire control system.

(Credit:Russ Underwood, Lockheed Martin)

The Airborne Laser may have lost favor in Washington, but it’s still going strong at Edwards Air Force Base.

Last week, in a continuing series of piecemeal tests, the ABL engaged in an in-flight trial run against an instrumented target missile. The aircraft used its infrared sensors to locate the missile, then fired a pair of solid-state illuminator lasers that tracked the missile and gauged atmospheric conditions. “This test demonstrates that the Airborne Laser can fully engage an in-flight missile with its battle management and beam control/fire control systems,” Michael Rinn, Boeing vice president and ABL program director, said in a statement. “Pointing and focusing a laser beam on a target that is rocketing skyward at thousands of miles per hour is no easy task.”

The one-of-a-kind ABL was built to test out and ultimately show off what a laser beam can do to a ballistic missile fired in anger. The goal, if and when all systems are go, is for the laser-equipped aircraft to home in on an ICBM while it’s still early in its trajectory, holding the laser beam on the missile long enough to rupture its skin and thus knock it out of commission.

A number of increasingly complex tests still lie ahead for the ABL, including firing the high-energy laser through the Lockheed Martin-developed beam control/fire control system and out of the nose-mounted turret. Before the end of the year, Boeing expects to do a full-fledged intercept test against a ballistic missile.

Ambitious plans for the Airborne Laser, however, have been considerably scaled back. Earlier this year, in revamping the Pentagon’s budget and operations priorities, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that a second prototype would not be built.

The Airborne Laser in flight.

Given that an aircraft in flight can be a fidgety beast, the ABL’s ability to maintain precise alignments was a notable accomplishment, according to a Thursday press release from Northrop Grumman, which designed and built the high-energy laser:

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