LASER STRIKES against US planes on the rise The next time you find yourself on an airline flight coming in for a landing, consider this: at that very moment, someone on the ground could be training a handheld laser at your aircraft's cockpit. It happens more often than you think. The FBI has only been keeping records of laser beams striking planes since 2004, but …
A couple of years ago I was accosted by one of the hand held green laser pointers from a car that was in front of me. Most likely by the passenger. It was very frightening and at first I didn't know what it was for a while (they intermittently flashed it). This was all at 65+ MPH on the interstate freeway. It wasn't very fun. My only solace was that I did get back at them. I went behind them (real close) with my bright lights on, ending in a less occupied lane. Then I sped away. I don't think that the driver had clean pants after my maneuver (which was the idea anyway).
The bad thing (for me) was that it woke up my wife, which was an untended side effect. I gave a good story and all was forgiven.
Airplanes? I don't want to think about it. I have relatives and friends that are flight (cockpit) crew for major airlines. They probably don't appreciate it AT ALL!
If this is a serious threat to aircraft why is it not a more common threat to road traffic ? There are roads everywhere and irresponsible fun would be to see how many cars we can crash tonight. But it doesn't happen.
These cheap and powerful lasers are probably a counter in drone wars ? Blind the sensors. Hundreds of innocent people die each year because of outrageous irresponsibility of the U.S. , the president of which should be got to the Hague as quick as possible. So on balance I this could be a good news story.
Cars, trucks, vans and all types of ground transport, can stop quickly, with minimal risk to life, even with the drivers eyes closed.
Granted that some one might crash, but it wouldn't be i the scale of an aircraft crash, or from the distance that it could be caused from with a laser.
Lasers and road traffic, just gets people to pull over, get out, and beat the shit out of the tools with the laser.
@Alan Firminger
And WTF has this got to do with US drone strikes, the current president (one who seems to be trying his best to reduce overseas military assets / strikes, as much as is feasible, taking into account resources and money already commited), or the Hague? Which President do you mean? The one left with the shit on his plate or the one (or more) that started it?
Maybe it isn't one individual Presidents fault, but the whole countries fault, and you're just pointing fingers at the current President, because you probably can't name the last five in order? Who knows?
High power lasers, directed at comercial aircraft, needs to be dealt with, BEFORE something happens, and the current state of the US international agenda / internal polotics have cock all to do with that.
Most of this story is nonsense. Annoying it might be, but dangerous? If the beam is really 6 feet in diameter by the time it , then the energy density of even a 1w laser (far stronger than the "pointer type") would be low, at about 0.4W per square metre. In comparison, the energy density of sunlight can reach over 1KW per square metre, over half of which is in the infra red (although the UV is far more damaging). The eye has defence mechanisms to prevent damage caused by sudden exposure to sunlight (although staring are the sun for any period of time is not recommended).
I have a very strong suspicion - approaching certainty - that the eye damage referred to in the article is not from a pilot "targetted" by a laser at a few hundred metres, but eye damage caused by these laser pointers in other contexts. I rather think that the source of this story is deliberately giving the impression there are pilots who've had their eyes damaged through being momentarily dazzled rather than through misuse of laser pointers at close range in other contexts (which is credible). Specific examples would have helped, of which none are provided.
Of course, it might be thought that even being momentarily dazzled could cause a crash, but in these days of automated approaches and safety systems at major airports? Seems very unlikely.
This story comes up regularly. I think there are far more real risks in life than this one...
Do you remember the 'plane mounted laser/ray gun articles El Reg used to run? Maybe the should combine the two. Give the commercial airliners ray guns so they can fight matches with napalm.
BTW, my take, there are 10 incidents per day, 3,650/year, yet no substantiated reports of real damage. I think this is just something that annoys pilots more than anything, perhaps because it interrupts their sleep.
>> That's wide enough to light up an entire cockpit, with an intensity that's comparable to a camera flash.
So pretty much like drive down an unlit motorway, and having an idiot with full beams on behind you? Or driving down a dark road, when a speed camera flash someone on the opposite side of the road? - except that there is nothing to crash into and you have autopilot to do the real work.
"So pretty much like drive down an unlit motorway, and having an idiot with full beams on behind you? Or driving down a dark road, when a speed camera flash someone on the opposite side of the road? - except that there is nothing to crash into and you have autopilot to do the real work."
Except for the fact you can stop a car within a few dozen feet, more then one person dies (if indeed its a fatal crash), that a speed camera only flashes you if your breaking the law, and that an auto-pilot is generally not used during take-off and landing, and that a dazzled pilot cant find the switch to turn it on... yes, that's exactly how it is!
The Reg goes out to an isolated area (away from roads and aircraft) where there is 2,000 feet of clear space from source to target, and something large (like a hillside) behind the targets so the beam doesn't go miles.
You create four plywood targets and place them 500, 1,000, 1500 and 2,000 feet from the source. Keep in mind the targets have to be big enough that you can measure how much the laser beam has dispersed.
You shine a few samples of commercially available hand-held laser pointers at them.
You do the same thing with some regulated high power industrial, medical or laboratory lasers. A friendly university engineering faculty should be able to source some for you to borrow.
You'll want to carefully align the lasers so you hit the plywood targets and don't overshoot into the unknown.
You want to wear the appropriate protective goggles when using the high power lasers. Note the goggles will be different for different wavelength beams.
Once you know which lasers are safe enough to be hand held, you can do part two where you check on whether the human hand is steady enough.
Tell us the results in a follow-up article.
No amount of debate replaces actually doing the experiment. It is cheap, and it can be done safely in an isolated area using plywood targets by a few competent people.
Whilst I agree completely about the proposed test and publishing the results, once you have proven what we all know I then gives a green (LASER) light to idiots to then shine a LASER at a plane.
IMHO, the LASERs that are being shone at aeroplanes, and causing problems, are not the cheap five quid down the market types and more likely the few hundred quid types. There should probably be some sort of registry about the purchase of such devices.
This post has been deleted by its author
Quote: "IMHO, the LASERs that are being shone at aeroplanes, and causing problems, are not the cheap five quid down the market types and more likely the few hundred quid types. There should probably be some sort of registry about the purchase of such devices."
You mean like a firearms registry? That works flawlessly in the US doesn't it? Not sure it will work with things that have non lethal uses though, especially considering the lack of control over things designed SPECIFICALLY to injure, maim and kill!
... unless I have totally misunderstood how lasers work (quite probable), how does the beam widen to six feet after a certain distance? I thought that the whole point of lasers and the the thing that made them unique was the fact that it was a coherent beam of light and basically that means a dead straight beam of light that does not fan out or decohere. How else do they measure the distance to the moon if the beam is six feet wide by 30,000ft or so, and how spread out would it be a quarter of a million miles later? Obviously they are talking about a beam from a pointer that would realistically at the most be a few hundred mW in power, and I would imagine that a super powerful laser would suffer less decoherence or fanning out.
Boy that , must be one powerful laser! Then again there is the pulsed laser versus continuous beam laser to consider as well. Even things like lasers are not straightforward, in fact they are damned complicated. I'll have to look up exactly how they do dat later.
Actually after looking up spatial and temporal coherence, I see that I am indeed wrong and things are not so simple.
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The most monochromatic sources are usually lasers; such high monochromaticity implies long coherence lengths (up to hundreds of meters). For example, a stabilized helium-neon laser can produce light with coherence lengths in excess of 5 m
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Whoopee doo...
I suppose the coherence of the ray produced would be directly proportional to the power used to generate it.
Less power - less coherence. More power - more coherence (up to the point of hitting the moon and bouncing back - a half a million mile round trip - to get measurements of the accuracy that can tell us that the moon is is moving away from us a few inches or feet every year (can't remember which it is)). And if you are going to hit a tank from an aeroplane mounted laser weapon, I would imagine that beam or pulse of light would not fan out over equivalent distances. Air to ground as opposed to ground to air. The power would need to be directed at the target and not dispersed over a wide area. A close direct hit of a low power laser beam to the eye will cause blindness, a long range hit would obviously be dispersed quite a bit from the same said powered beam. I also question whether this could even cause the 'just like a photo-flash going off' theory. Mmmm. Not convinced either way. It wouldn't cause blindness and it wouldn't have the power to light the cockpit up either.
But that is just with a pointer type device of low mWs. If you had a 1000mW to play with and the plane was only yards away - I have been there - I had an air side pass when I worked at Heathrow - then yes you could quite easily blind a pilot. The question is, is he using autoland software or doing it old-school? If it is the latter and he doesn't expect to be zapped, then you have just scored a major point. And killed a few hundred people in the process. I've seen pointer devices that go up to 1500mW . Also, is he landing or taking off?
Lasers have always fascinated me, I even did a course when I was at uni to become certified as a laser safety officer. As you can imagine I was taught all about lasers and how they worked, the different designs etc. and obviously most important of all - how not to blind thousands of people at a rave when their pupils are like saucers from the ecstasy and acid - pupil dilation and response has a major effect on the harm that a laser can do - not only are the pupils more dilated hence causing more damage, but the response time is reduced to the fact that the autonomic nervous system does nor respond as it normally would. The blink, or even looking away reflex can save eyesight in the majority of cases where a direct hit has been scored. As stated, this is reduced by the effects of certain pharmaceuticals on the body's natural responses.
Learned the software to generate messages and text and pictures/patterns - pangolin I think it was called - pretty nifty - you could program in a big smiley face to be projected along with the text (i.e. - you are all a load of soap-dodging drug-taking cnuts ;-)).
At one point, after pissing about with pen lasers and learning basic safety - red lasers tend to be less harmful than green lasers, which are less harmful than blue lasers. But it is the wattage of the power source not the colour that is the main factor in when it comes to safety. An 800mW red laser can blind you better than a five mW blue laser.
This guy even brought in the BEAST. A BFO machine that generated some serious wattage. We put our goggles on and marveled at the spectacle. Guy even did the lasers for Jean Michele Jarre at his live events. But I am rambling and reminiscing now. Btw, I never got my safety officer licence - I dropped out, but it was fun...
Out of curiosity and a bit of nostalgia, I wondered what it would cost to actually buy a bona fide laser these days. I do not and have never owned one (apart from inside cd players of course ;-)). But they were a lot more expensive then, now you can get a 5mW one from the net for less than a fiver including delivery. Red ones are cheapest because they are the simplest to make, being able to construct them from a single diode I believe. Green ones are more complicated and hence more expensive, they also tend to be more powerful and dangerous. Blue, more of the same again for the same reasons.
In fact I saw lasers for sale that hit the 1000mW mark. WTF? One direct hit to your retina or a bounce of a mirror/shiny surface will leave you with permanent eye damage. Actually no, not eye damage, that can be achieved by 5mW. Blindness! Apparently it is illegal to buy anything with more than a mW of power in the UK, so even the 5mW ones are technically illegal, although there is no law against importing them - so in theory you could buy one from the states - 1500mW (quite common and not expensive) and have it legally imported. You just can't buy one here. Except that I saw a place advertising 200mW lasers to be bought UK side. Either I don't know what I am talking about (possible), or the law is an ass (likely), or there is some kind of loophole thing going on...
A 200mW laser will blind someone easily. Not sure how good it is for measuring the distance to the moon though.
http://scienceblogs.com/builtonfacts/2010/12/16/all-right-im-gonna-delay/
Sorry for the ramble. Sometimes I'm just not very coherent.
Spatially, temporaly, or linguistically.
Or even logically.
Any physicists out there? Please put me over your metaphorical knee and spank some not so metaphorical sense into me. I love to be educated. I have always loved the subject of light. And don't get me started on the double-slit experiment! Did anyone think of trying that with pulse beamed lasers?
They diverge cos the optics you get in a cheap laser pointer are crap. Nasa spend a bit more that a quid.
The eye is more sensitive to green, the same power it looks brighter. Checkout ICNIRP book.
I think it is scare mongering otherwise something would have happened by now...
"More power - more coherence (up to the point of hitting the moon and bouncing back - a half a million mile round trip - to get measurements of the accuracy that can tell us that the moon is is moving away from us a few inches or feet every year (can't remember which it is)). "
It also helps if one has the forethought to put an optical corner reflector on the moon. Which they did.
What does prolixity mean?
Oh, right looked it up.
Very accurate assesment.
Otherwise known as talking shit, or at best not condensing the best parts down to make sense to an otherwise un-interested audience.
Fair comment. I agree with you in fact. Great word. Now I have a label to put on the disease - like autism.
It's ok - I'm autistic. It's ok - I'm prolixitic. Oh you don't know what it means...
I'm not in that type of mode at all. Kinky shit. I love it, but not now. (Graham, where are those leather underpants I ordered yesterday, I need them ToDay ;-)).
Yes, prolixity reduces coherence..
To paraphrase David Byrne: I'm a rambler.
Born under punches...
Its stupid people who use technology in an inappropriate way to annoy/risk lives.
So banning pointers makes no sense because all this will do is encourage the real criminals while annoying legitimate researchers and hobbyists with even more draconian regulations.
Better to educate than legislate, 99.999995% of the population would not even think of using a laser as a weapon in this way.
I mean those lasers typically have one of very few wavelength. So simply make "flip down" safety glasses for the pilots so they can simply filter out that particular wavelength.
Maybe it's even worth to just think about such an idea. Maybe just creating the urban legend would discourage people pointing laser pointers at planes.
If my workplace is any guide, everyone.
Seriously, every single time someone gets hold of a laser pointer, the first thing they do is frantically wave that thing about everyone else's desk and/or face. It's even as though lasers emit some kind of radiation that impairs human cognition, turning otherwise sensible people into flashlight-wielding morons.
In the UK they have made anything over one mW illegal.
There are still many 5mW pointers being sold in the UK.
And many 1500mW pointers that can be legally imported from usa for 20 quid.
Now, I am not for banning anything. Or censoring anything. But.........
I can't see what the point of a 1500mW pointer might be - yes - pointing out astronomical features - This is Orion, and in the middle we have, from left to right, Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka. Yes all very educational...
But you can do that with a 5mW.
I think the UK govt. should crack down on imports over at the very most 100mW (can still cause major eye damage).
The ban that is in place does not work. Lasers are very dangerous things. They can be made safe. By not having access to them.
All I know is, I can buy a 1500mW laser for £30 inc. delivery, legally from the states. With this, I can blind people in any room I share with them, I can even blind the pilots of 747's if I can get a good enough shot. And I am close enough.
And I can also use it to make fire by igniting paper or dry wood shavings.....
Just saying like. Don't have one yet. Though might get one soon before the new laws come into place...
The problem is that banning stuff just doesn't work. As someone here has already said: it rarely affects the real criminals, but causes major problems for legitimate users. There are plenty of legitimate uses of a >100mW laser.
One of which, for example, is in your CD writer. It is also relatively easy to disassemble a cheap CD writer and turn it into a very powerful laser pointer.
What would you prefer to do? Ban imports of blu-ray writers (which contain a >1000mW blue laser) or criminalise curious youths (our future scientists and engineers) for wanting to have some fun taking things to bits?
"The problem is that banning stuff just doesn't work. As someone here has already said: it rarely affects the real criminals"
'Real criminals' don't tend to waste time shining lights at 'planes. There's not much money in it.
We're talking about casual, stupid, thoughtless criminals here, who probably don't even realise what they're doing is criminal. So a ban or license requirement on powerful lasers would discourage most of them.
About a decade or so ago in Berkshire, when the memsahib was an eye surgeon working there, there was a spate of lasers being used to dazzle the rozzers in the street from distances of no more than a few hundred metres. They (and some of the public) would frequently come in wanting some kind of treatment but to be frank there isn't any as no damage was done. Yes, lasers are used in eye surgery and do have an effect but you really need to be close up, althought the eye does assist by automatically focussing on the light and cncentrating it on a point of the retina, which in this case does not help. The situation got to the point where all such cases were turned away at the door. Yes, doctors refused to see them. As a considered response having examined the facts. Basically you've been dazzled by a strong light, and just need to rest the eye for a bit. This is the real danger for pilots (also motorists etc), particularly at night where they might be acclimatised to darkness outside the cockpit and dimmed instrumentation inside.
Laser power has undoubtedly increased over time but there are still no documented cases where such idiocy has been the direct cause of ocular trauma. It might distract a pilot so that s/he has an accident which would probably be significant in it's own right but you could acheive the same effect with a decent searchlight.
One question the police would, however, never answer is why it was still acceptable in the circumstances for them to be firing their laser speed devices directly at the front of motor vehicles. Whilst they aim at the number plate, a slight movement of the hand would be enough to place the laser spot on the windscreen/visor of the motorist/motorcyclist. I don't know much about the frequency/visibility of their lasers but if there was dust or some factor in the transparent material that made the beam more visible, would this not be hypocritical? One trusts that greater minds than mine have considered and addressed this issue but I'd appreciate any informed comment in return.
"One question the police would, however, never answer is why it was still acceptable in the circumstances for them to be firing their laser speed devices directly at the front of motor vehicles."
One, LIDARs don't need a lot of power to work: just enough to reach a vehicle a few (at worst, tens) of meters away and reflect back (usually via your plate or lamp housings). Some reports I've read indicate the laser used is only rated in the tens of mW--not exactly in the danger zone. Two, LIDARs normally use beams outside the visible spectrum (typically infrared or ultraviolet). Three, police don't tend to fire them until you're close (A, because it help minimize exposure time and the chance of hitting the wrong thing and causing a false reading, and B, because it makes it too late to detect when you're being clocked).
Surely there's a technological solution.
For example I'm under the impression that things like binos and goggles can be rendered laswer safe with a coating or laminate.
Give the pilots or at least one pilot said glasses, like the coldwar days when it was alleged NEACP and Looking Glass pilots wore an eyepatch, so they'd have a good eye in the event they weere blinded by a nuke flash.
Or treat the cockpit windows.
Oh yeah and issue a laser detector and a hellfire, to each civil airliner.
Even as a passenger in an aircraft I have seen people shining a laser at the aircraft. It is blinding like a sunstrike, yes, but when it is dark this is much, much brighter in its percieved effect.
The technical niceties of wavelength and wattage are less relevant that the impact.
Can you drive a car in the dark with a million candle torch on the dash pointing at your face??
The tech that makes welding masks instantly darken on striking an arc could presumably be worn by the pilots as goggles or built into the windshield. I would guess that the light from a welding arc at point blank range is a lot more intense than that from a laser pointer pointed at a flying aircraft.
Lasers arent the only dangerous lights, according to Tom Clancey in Debt of Honour, where as far as I can remember Clarke & Chavez down Japanese AWACSes with a mercury discharge flashgun.
"The tech that makes welding masks instantly darken on striking an arc could presumably be worn by the pilots as goggles or built into the windshield."
Why yes they could *If they wanted to see sod all!*
Would you wear sunglasses while driving a car at night in case someone drives at you with lights on full beam? No, because it's clearly stupid.
Now consider that aircraft don't have their own headlights to illuminate the course ahead, making things relatively even darker for the pilot than the afore-mentioned ray-ban equipped night driver.
And that the tint on a welding mask is far heavier than the tint on sunglasses.
And that things that you have to worry about why flying a plane at several hundred mph are far further away than things that you worry about looking for when driving a car.
Thing is, arc sparks are brief and sporadic. Well-aimed, a laser dazzler can be continuous, meaning you're either blinded by the dazzler or blinded by the automatic shade, neither of which are very comfortable positions to be in when you're trying to line up for a runway landing.
"The thing about automatic welding helmets is that they darken very quickly when there's bright light, then lighten almost as quickly when there's no bright light."
Does it darken and lighten again as quickly as -say- an eyelid?
If not, then you've just created a marvellously over-engineered solution. Even worse, really: Because the MOMENT that the light is gone is the time when the pilot most needs to re-orientate themselves and check their instrumentation. Waiting around for another couple of seconds would be even more detrimental.
Well under a millisecond to block light, under a second to llghten again. It's quicker and more reliable than trusting your blink reaction, and it can tell when the light stops shining - how are you going to do that with your eyes shut?
...to annoy the sisters cat with, and showed it to my housemate. Lo and behold, within about a week, he showed me this --> www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/9220786.Arrests_after_lasers_shone_at_aircraft/?ref=rss
Damn, the planes have their wheels down as they pass overhead and I live not half a mile away from these assholes! They shulda thrown away the key!
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