Another Most Wanted Taliban Commander Buys The Farm - awww!

CNN) -- The Pakistani army killed one of the most wanted Taliban commanders on Sunday in the country's tribal region, the military said Tuesday.

He is Ameer Ullah Mehsud, one of the founders of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP.
Mehsud, 45, was from the town of Makeen in South Waziristan, one of the seven districts of Pakistan's lawlessness tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

The military said Mehsud, wanted for a bounty of $234,000, was killed during an exchange of fire with soldiers near Miran Shah in North Waziristan. He was known as Mazloomyar, which means "friend of the oppressed."

Surveillance Blimp to watch over oil

New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) -- A massive, silver-colored blimp is expected to arrive in the Gulf Coast Tuesday to aid in oil disaster response efforts.
The U.S. Navy airship will be used to detect oil, direct skimming ships and look for wildlife that may be threatened by oil, the Coast Guard said Monday.

The 178-foot-long blimp, known as the MZ-3A, can carry a crew of up to 10. It will fly slowly over the region to track where the oil is flowing and how it is coming ashore.
The Navy says the advantage of the blimp over current helicopter surveillance operations is that it can stay aloft longer, with lower fuel costs, and can survey a wider area.
The Coast Guard has already been pinpointing traveling pools of oil from the sky.

"The aircraft get on top of the oil. They can identify what type of oil it is and they can vector in the skimmer vessels right to the spot," Coast Guard Capt. Brian Kelley said.
But the problem since last Wednesday has been the ability to clean it up before it approaches land.

Rough seas have hampered cleanup efforts and tests by the boat -- called A Whale -- billed as the world's largest skimmer.
Tests of A Whale's ability so far are "inconclusive," meaning the massive converted oil tanker--which is 3.5 football fields long -- has yet to prove its Taiwanese owner's claim that it can skim between 15,000 and 50,000 barrels of oil off the sea in a day.

The Coast Guard said the testing period for the A Whale has been extended through Thursday.
So far, crude oil floating in the sea has not been concentrated enough for A Whale to skim effectively, according to oil company BP, even though it appears the ship has been surrounded by pools of oil just a few miles from the gusher.

"We've got oil coming up from over a mile below the surface. And it doesn't always come up in one spot. It's not always predictable. So, in fact, we need to locate the oil first, and then assign the ship to the areas of heaviest concentration," BP spokesman Hank Garcia said.

Bad weather has hindered cleanup efforts, he said.
"When you've got 6-foot, 8-foot seas, it's not going to lend itself to good capture of the oil."
According to the National Hurricane Center's 8 a.m. ET update Tuesday, two low-pressure weather systems over the Gulf of Mexico are persisting for another morning, but neither has more than a 30 percent chance of evolving into a tropical depression or more severe storm over the next 48 hours.

On Monday, authorities said tar balls linked to the crude gushing from BP's ruptured deepwater well had reached Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain and hit the beaches near Galveston, Texas.

The Coast Guard reported over the weekend that a shift in weather patterns could send more oil toward sensitive shores in Mississippi and Louisiana, and bad weather over the past few days has significantly hampered cleanup efforts.

Anne Rheams, executive director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, said Monday that the pattern was expected to persist for at least three more days.
The National Hurricane Center said early Tuesday morning that a low-pressure area located near the Louisiana coast was producing a few showers and thunderstorms, but it was not likely to develop into a tropical cyclone in the next 48 hours.

Federal estimates say between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels (about 1.5 million to 2.5 million gallons) of oil have been gushing into the Gulf daily since April 22, when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig sank in the Gulf, two days after it exploded in flames.
The accident left 11 workers dead and uncorked an undersea gusher that BP has been unable to cap for 11 weeks.

Speed Agile Stealth Transport concept design discovered

AVWK ARES BLOG:

Patent Lifts Veil on Boeing's Speed Agile
Posted by Graham Warwick at 7/2/2010 9:02 AM CDT

I am researching something on future airlifters and wanted artwork on the stealthy super-STOL tactical transport Boeing windtunnel tested under the US Air Force Research Laboratory's Speed Agile program. I asked Boeing if they had a releasable image. No, they said. I asked AFRL. No, said they. So there I was passing the time browsing the US Patent and Trademark Office website and what do I find but this:

Source: USPTO

The patent is here and it's Speed Agile, or close to it based on the one image of a 2008 windtunnel model that I do have, from a presentation by the Boeing program manager at an AIAA conference.

Photo: Boeing

Speed Agile involved low- and high-speed windtunnel tests of a stealthy airlifter concept that could take off in 1,500ft and cruise at Mach 0.8. Usually STOL aircraft aren't that fast. Boeing's design achieves this "speed agility" using a "propulsive wing" - engines embedded in the wing exhaust throught slots at the trailing edge to provide lift as well as thrust.



RELATED LINK: SPEED AGILE POWERPOINT SOLICITATION DOCUMENTS

Source: USPTO

Speed Agile is part of studies into a potential C-130 replacement once called AMC-X, then the Advanced Joint Air Combat System (AJACS), but now morphed into the Air Force/Army Joint Future Heavy Lift. AFRL says Lockheed Martin is now building models of its design for low- and high-speed windtunnel testing. Lockheed has previously shown what could be their Speed Agile concept.

Missed it by that much! Cargo spacecraft keeps going ...

CNN) -- An unmanned cargo spacecraft failed to dock as scheduled Friday with the International Space Station, a NASA spokeswoman said.
The Progress cargo vessel, a resupply craft, was trying to dock with the space station when a technical problem occurred about 20 minutes before the scheduled docking time, said Lynette Madison, the spokeswoman.
The vessel flew about two miles past the space station.

"This is kind of a fluke event," she said. "We normally don't have any problems with Progress dockings. We dock those every few months. So this is an unusual event."

Six people aboard the space station -- three Americans and three Russians -- are not in danger, Madison said.

Engineers with the Russian Space Agency will try to dock the vehicle again, but they do not plan to try that on Friday, she said. They have "some" control of the vehicle, she said.

The craft launched Wednesday from the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan, the state-run RIA-Novosti news agency of Russia said.

It planned to deliver "fuel, oxygen, scientific equipment and video and photo equipment" to the space station along with food, water and personal items for crew members, the news agency said.
Progress re-supply vehicles typically deliver supplies to the space station and haul away trash, burning up on re-entry.

Pakistan shrine attack may signal coming attack against American interests

Police are on high alert across Pakistan after a deadly suicide attack on a Sufi Islamic shrine in the eastern city of Lahore.

Security has been increased in Lahore and at Sufi shrines across the country, after 42 people died at the Data Darbar shrine on Thursday.

Protesters have demonstrated outside the shrine, in anger at what they say were lax security measures.

Wider demonstrations are expected for later in the day, after Friday prayers.

No group has yet said that it carried out the attack, but the finger of blame is being pointed at the Taliban.

The type of target, a Muslim shrine, is unusual. There are some elements among Islamist extremists, including the Taliban, who believe that worshipping at the shrines of saints is un-Islamic, and this is one theory why this shrine was attacked.

There was another sectarian attack just over a month ago in Lahore in which 80 people died, when two mosques used by Ahmadi Muslims were hit by militants.

This could be a battle within a battle that the militants are having with the Pakistani state.

The popular shrine holds the remains of a Persian Sufi saint, Abul Hassan Ali Hajvery.

It is visited by hundreds of thousands of people each year from both Sunni and Shia traditions of Islam.

The impact of the two blasts ripped open the courtyard of the shrine. Rescuers had to clamber over rubble as they carried out the victims.

The first attacker struck in the underground area where visitors sleep and prepare themselves for prayer, officials said.

As people fled, a second bomber detonated his explosives in the upstairs area.

The bombers are thought to have used devices packed with ball-bearings to maximise the impact of their attack.

A volunteer security guard at the shrine described scenes of devastation.

"It was a horrible scene," said Mohammed Nasir. "There were dead bodies all around with blood and people were crying."


The attack is the biggest on a Sufi shrine in Pakistan since militant attacks began in 2001.

No group has said it carried out the attack, but correspondents say the attacks continue a growing trend among militants to target members of other sects as well as minorities.

The attack may also feed the pervading anti-American sentiment, a sense that US interference in the region is indirectly to blame, says the BBC's Jill McGivering.

Lahore has been hit by a series of bomb attacks, including a suicide blast at anti-terrorist offices in March, when at least 13 people died.

BIG MILITANT ATTACKS

28 May 2010 - 93 people killed in attacks on two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore
19 Apr 2010 - At least 23 die in suicide bombing at market in Peshawar
1 Jan 2010 - A bomb at a volleyball match kills about 100
28 Oct 2009 - At least 120 die in car bomb attack on packed market in Peshawar
15 Oct 2009 - About 40 die in a series of gun and bomb attacks
9 Oct 2009 - At least 50 die in Peshawar suicide blast
In May, more than 90 people were killed in a double attack on the minority Ahmadi sect in the city.

Earlier, security chiefs had been congratulating themselves after June was the first month in two years in which there had been no suicide bombings in Pakistan.

They said it was proof the militant networks had been disrupted.

Last year Pakistan launched a major military offensive against militant strongholds in South Waziristan.

In December the military said they had achieved victory, but subsequent reports have suggested the militants remain active in the region.