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FBI Investigating Laser Beams Pointed at Aircraft
sakshale writes "In an earlier discussion about Laser Pistols, many people argued about the concept of using them to target pilots of airliners. Apparently the FBI is investigating incidents in Cleveland and Colorado Springs. They issued a warning on December 14th."
How can a laser beam travel round the nose of a plane overhead, and accurately reach the pilot's eyes from say, a few thousand feet away?
The guy pointing it must have steady hands, and damn good vision.
It does have the ring of "post-Sep-11th-paranoia" about it, doesn't it?
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Given the complexity of tracking a jet plane and the angles involved in getting a beam into a cockpit, one of the most likely conclusions is that this in fact is a malicious threat. It sounds pretty paranoid but heck, someone has obviously gone to some trouble to setup a mechanism that can track a rapidly moving object in flight. I'm glad the FBI is investigating because I fly almost every month and the last thing I want is to wind up in a plane with a blind cabin crew.
This may or may not be a threat. Some interesting thoughts here
But it seems to be that it would be awful hard for something from the ground to actually hit the inside of the cockpit unless it had some sort of tracking device to track the plane, and was high enough to hit the inside of the cockpit instead of the nose cone (perhaps on a tall building or mountain near an airport).
I think this could be another tactic to strike fear into the populace.
Unfortunately, that's the idea.
- Totally seal the borders
- Confiscate and auction off the properties of all employers of illegal aliens to pay the expenses of
- sending illegals home
- back taxes and
- social service costs of supporting illegals to date
- provide huge prize incentives for commercial development of alternatives to the fragile air transportation infrastructure
- provide huge prize incentives for commercial development of small-capitalization self-sufficiency systems so that small communities if not individual households could provide their basic necessities without reliance on centralized structures
- tear down the prison system as unfit for human habitation and construct a new one in which none of
- make sure that when national guardsmen come home from Iraq, trained in urban warfare and all pissed off at having been abused by the government, they at least have a job.
I know, I know... This is all way too sane for the scum who have occupied the positions of trust and authority within the de facto government of the US.- prisoner rape or other violence
- hepatitis C or
- AIDS
was a substantial risk andSeastead this.
Have they explored onboard possibilities? Some emission coming from one of the onboard instruments?
This whole thing is some serious bullshit - are we really expected to believe that someone can point a laser at a plane the best part of a mile away going at anything over 100mph and actually hit someones eyes (which you cant see) behind a windscreen (which you can barely make out). Even if they were standing in the waiting room facing the parked plane 30 feet away it would be a challenge. If someone was that accurate they would just park near a runway and take pot-shots with a rifle, this is the most absurd bullshit scare-mongering, or how can i put it... 'terror' tactic that has been used to date to scare us, and behold, its not coming from the terrorists, its coming from media who need to sensationalise dog shit to get some ratings.
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no it is not.
any laser that the general public can get their hands on will DO NO DAMAGE to a pilot or even distract them.
first off even the high power green ones, at the 100 meters or MORE distance these people are at, they need to retrofit the laser with a tripod, fluid head and a high power scope just to hit the plane.
Now let's addin the fac tt hat the angle if incidence of the beam to the cockpit window is at such an extreme angle that less than 20% of the beam will pass through the window, and THAT will get attenuated further by the cockpit glass.
let's further add that the pilot is looking at the centerline of the runway and not directly at things that might be interesting, and if it's a clear sunny day a reflection glint off cars in the parking lot is 200 times brighter than any consumer laser.
this is nothing but a bunch of people freaking out about isolated incidents.
if I was able to get my hands on a targeting laser, Yes, that MIGHT be able to hit the cockpit window because of the gyro stablization of the optics and laser, but then it's infrared so NOBODY would know it was hitting it!
can I get my hands on industrial lasers? yeah if I look hard enough, but you certianly will not run them off some portable battery for longer than a few seconds.
it is NOT a serious problem. Quit being a scared soccer mom.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This is exactly what I have been wondering. You would need some sort of computer assisted device. 20+ years of Star Wars research can't hit a target the size of a ballistic missle. I am pretty sceptical that any one could repeatedly hit inside a cockpit window of an airplane and at the right angle to hit the pilots eyes. Also, a good number of planes land on Auto pilot. this doesn't seem like a very exact way to terrorize people. It sounds more like some pranksters with a laser gun that get a few lucky shots at landing planes. Disturbingly enough Fox news said that one day terrorists could have laser technology that could pierce a planes hull. Unbelievable.....
Cant have something in the hands of the private citizen that MIGHT be used improperly can we?
For get the multitude of legal uses, if there is ONE illegal use, we must take it off the market. And investigate anyone hat purchased the product before the ban..
Must protect society...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm sorry, but don't these anecdotes remind you just a little bit of the "mysterious odor sends dozens to hospital at local mall" stories on the news?
One person says they smell a laser, someone else says "hey, I smell lasers in my cockpit too". Next thing you know, you're nobody unless terrorists are illuminating your cockpit with lasers. Lasers that smell mysterious.
How in the world does one use radar to determine the source of a laser?
I was curious whether it was remotely possible for this to be a handheld device. I did a quick experiment to quantify the stability of my hands while holding a simulated laser device (a 10" bamboo chopstick) as steadily as possible, and then scaled the distance up.
The steadiest I could hold the simulated laser resulted in a 1mm quiver at the tip. If we suppose the aircraft is 30k' away (about 5.7 miles), then:
x / 30k' = 1mm / 10"
x = 36meters = 118' quiver.
So, whatever this thing is, it isn't handheld.
Humm, I think we need to ban Tom Clancy novels Lets see 1) Crash airline into building, take out government. Check 2) Blind pilots on approach, crash plane Check Whats next? I am voting for Jack Ryan in the next election.
Near IR lasers tend to be absorbed by the front of the eye and not make it to the retina. (That doesn't mean they can't do harm to the eye, but not in the same way.) But this isn't so important here since we're talking about red and green lasers which can certainly burn the retina.
For focus disance or collimation, lasers are usually either collimated or focused near the lens (a few cm up to a few meters, though some long range lidar lasers might be focused much further). In either case, the beam divergence is usually quite huge (several milliradians at least. The only way to keep the beam divergence low is to start with a very wide beam. (The divergence equation is theta = lambda*f/w0 where f is the focus distance and w0 is the beam width out of the lens.)
Laser pointers are low quality optics (as you say) and are only mean to operate at a few meters, with a spot size that is ~5 mm at a few meters. At several km where planes fly, the laser spot size would be huge. (A 1 mrad divergence at 1 km would be about a 2 m wide spot.) The power density of even 100 mW beam at that width would be pretty small and certainly could not cut through plastic or harm eyes.
Then there's how stationary the beam is. The 100 mW beam requires a few seconds of stationary positioning to cut into the plastic. In the example video from your reference article the beam is mounted on a stationary holder. If even the person held it in their hands just the hand motion would probably keep it from burning through. At 1 km (or more), only a slight hand motion would move the beam around several meters, not to mention the plane itself is moving.