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U.S. DOT Launches Laser Illumination Reporting
Unloaded writes "The
U.S. Department of Transportation announced a
new laser warning and reporting system for pilots . The
FAA has it's own guidelines for reporting laser illumination." This is a follow up on stories reported earlier.
It would appear that my army of sharks with frickin' laser beams on their foreheads is no longer feasible.
This makes me sad.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
I was listening to the news (NRP) this morning and the reporter explained how this was a "sudden rash" of activity. But is that really the case? It seems to me that this has been happening for a long time. Laser pointers have been available to the general public for quite some time now. We are supposed to believe that people only got it into their heads to start aiming them at planes and other interesting targets within the past few months?
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..with the remaining eye..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
- Flys above clouds (if present)
- Doesn't have a flight deck pointing towards the ground (granted they bank, light refects and low angle beams)
- Doesn't hang around if one place long enough for any ground based beam to hit someone eye for more than fractions of a second, so it doesn't matter (unless your talking about one of these)
Anyway.... how long is it before they also recommend, radar and IR detection, as well as chaff and flares for civilian planes?? or perhapse civilian stealth?? [I'd quite like to see a stealth Airbus A380]Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
Fight Spammers!
The goggles...... zey do nothing!!!!!!!!! /McBain
Is there some authority who will take reports on those morons who paint the movie screen with laser pointers?
Which frequency? What if someone uses a different type of laser?
Sure, if they want the pilots to be unable to see. Lasers can be in any wavelength of the EM spectrum. There's no way to block out all lasers without blocking out all light.
Personally, I prefer the extra safety of having pilots able to look at their surroundings.
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Open mind, insert foot.
(or meters/metres for those of you not in the US) Since a very small movement of the wrist is going to result in a large movement at the other end of the beam, it stirkes me that it has to be pretty darn hard to aim a laser beam into a cockpit unless you've either got it mounted on some sort of tripod or you're very close to the take-off/landing point (in which case, you should be fairly easy to find)
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Just what the hell is this supposed to accomplish?
"Hey, you just got a laser aimed at the cockpit!" says the computer.
"Great, what are we supposed to do, try to evade it? Somehow, re-enacting the final flight scenes of the movie Top Gun doesn't seem like such a hot idea in a Boeing 757 full of people while we're on a landing approach...and by the way, thanks for the hot tip about that brief blinding flash I just encountered. Glad to know it wasn't just my imagination," says the pilot.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
pfft....when i tried to warn the pilots with my laser pointer, i got fbi guys at my door the next hour.
If you think
A lot of good some puny laser warning system will do them when I start aiming my death ray at the cockpit.
Remember folks, death rays don't kill people: people kill people.
... so they could get a clue. Or at least listen to their own CDRH...
http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/sam/lasersam.htm
Firefox &
as a result of development of this technology. Or did they just mount a stock one from Radio Shark on the airplane windshield?
Lasers can be made at various frequencies, so that might be tricky. You can purchase goggles that block out certain laser frequencies, but I suspect it might be difficult to read certain indicators on instruments if the goggles were meant to block out green light. The transmission efficiency of most laser goggles isn't very good.
==
They're not illegal (here); The novelty's worn off.
It's just too much to ask for people to have consideration for others...
We must legislate "nice behaviour"?
I mean I'm about to fly to France [again] and I'm nervous enough about the flight [say weather or other failures], about getting my work done, about getting all my stuff there and back, etc...
Now I have to also worry about some jackass with a sub-90 IQ pointing a laser during takeoff or something?
Fuck humanity.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Whew, it is a good thing they included that advice. I am sure most airline pilots figured that the best way to deflect a laser is with their eyeball.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
These would not even be visible.
Why can't this much effort be expended on creating a reporting and monitoring system for not loosing my luggage? Or how about for increasing on-time flight?. Or modernizing the radar systems?
Some guy in an apartment shines a laser that hits a plane and he's being treated like a terrorist. I haven't seen enough technical info that would convice me that an average laser on the ground would really be capable of causing a real problem. Perhaps outfit the pilots with $10 goggles or something.
Shoulder fired rockets are more likely to be a problem and we haven't spent the money to outfit planes with countermeasures; its cheaper to arrest people for pointing a laser and gives the appearance of being 'tough on terrorism'.
Dang...I guess that means I won't be able to use my death ray/laser pointer to illuminate any more planes :(.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
Is this problem really so bad that the government needs to start shelling out loads of cash to implement a system against it?
How is the parent Offtopic? He's just questioning the cost/benefit analysis of a "new reporting system for pilots" which is what the article is about.
That's right on point if you ask me. Is this a serious issue that we should be spending tax dollars on? From what I've read, I'm skeptical.
-dynamo
Hey kids! If a jet is travelling at 500MPH and passes overhead, how long will that dot of light be visible?
Now calculate exactly the angle required to shine a lazer through teh windshield of an aircraft flying overhead without going through the floor!
What have we learned today? If an external laser light is visible at all inside a jet, it means someone is trying hard to keep it on the cockpit (unless of course they are trying to blind passengers which makes little sense from a diobolical standpoint but perhaps would give laser owning idiots the same jollies).
I would also say if you do not have full control of your equipment you probably should not be whipping it out. Or else the kid playing in the tree next to you could have pretty good grounds for a suit against you even if you don't "accidentally" track a jet for five+ seconds.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A couple of quick points -
From what I can tell from talking to commercial airline pilots, most landings are done manually to keep in practice, and hand flown landings are usually softer than the ones flown automatically.
The people in the tower cannot land the plane. Only the people in the cockpit can control the autopilot/autoland functions.
There is no way for the tower to land the plane in the case of an emergency. If there were, the hijacked planes on 9/11 would have been controlled from the ground. This concept has been brought up before, and the pilot unions have raised issues with it, particularly the possibility of someone unauthorized getting into the system and downing a few planes despite perfectly capable flight crews being on-board.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Maybe laser-guided missiles installed in the planes would be a great deterrent. Shine a laser at the plane, you get a missile at your front door...
t m
Unless you're in China, in which case they crash an old satellite into your apartment living room: http://www.china.org.cn/english/2004/Oct/109656.h
All they need are colored glasses to filter out that particular part of the spectrum. In the same way that red light is used for reading in the darkness and not rendering you blind after, a colorized glass could filter out the green lights. Heck, we wear them in my lab when we work with the lasers. So do the people that make the laser pointers.
I read the title and thought "wow, a wise thing". Only the summary+article changed that.
Just think: A laser illumination reporting/warning system. Using the kind of lasers that are used at disco to display stuff on the sky to project warnings on the clouds - hurricane, earthquake, flood, contamination, whatever disaster. These things are broadcast through the radio and TV, but people who aren't listening to a radio/watch tv at the moment may peek through the window to identify the "lights on the sky" - and the lights are saying "Chemical alert! Everyone in South-eastern district please move west, out of the way of the poisonous chlorine cloud,"
These things could be put to much better use than "cool pics on the clouds". Of course it would work only at night, but... why not?
Unfortunately "laser illumination reporting" means not reporting by use of laser but having use of laser reported. Stupid.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I VERY MUCH disagree with you. You sir are a harebrained, idiotic, mentally incompetent, ill informed, loony.
A system to land a plane remotely (i.e. from "the tower" has never been deployed on commercial airliners. Furthermore an autopilot is NOT capable of automatically landing a plane at the vast majority of airports.
.sig
Wtf is someone going to do with a laser that will take down a commercial airliner?
How about a laser-guided RPG/missle?
Ach! My eyes! The goggles do nothing!
Just get the pilots to wear goggles of the specific wavelengths, such as of the most popular lasers, which I think is something like 550-700 nm? I could be wrong, but you get the idea...
A blog like any other.
Someone please tell me WHY someone can face jail time for pointing up at the sky ? I mean, hell, unless you live on the incoming/outgoing path of an airport, chances are the plane is at least 5,000 feet up! Most likely closer to 30-40,000 feet... We, as citizens, should have a right to sit in our back yards--and with no intent of harm--point laser pointers at the sky. I mean, who's the guy that decided to put little white lights on the plane that makes it blend in with stars at night? We cant tell it's a plane, it's 20-40,000 feet away, it's rediculous that we can face penalties for it... I think we are letting terrorism win by being afraid of this, people have been doing this for ages now, but since 9/11, and exagerated media reporting about it, it's now being blown outta proportion.. like the RIAA arresting a 12 year old girl for being some monsterous pirate of intellectual property... If it's really an issue, it's the responsibility of the 'operator' of the vehicle to make sure he can see.. it's not the responsability of someone 40,000 feet away to properly identify a small white blip in the sky as a plane, not a star...
Laser pointers are not explicitly illegal in the USA. The FDA says it's illegal to sell equipment that emits laser radiation and hasn't had a power classification filed. Laser pointers usually come with the FDA warning sticker stating the maximum emitted power. Even CD players, which do not in normal circumstances emit beams from the case, have such a rating.
However, many states have made it illegal to point lasers at oncoming traffic, citing that it distracts drivers and becomes a safety hazard. For the same exact reason, having misaligned headlights is also illegal.
A laser used properly is just like any other potentially hazardous machine. Chainsaws have been used to commit some nasty acts, but nobody would even consider the possibility of banning or tightly regulating them just because they've got a sinister use. [insert gun control rant here]
I take it you wouldn't be bothered if someone shone a laser into your eyes while you're trying to drive at night?
Shine it in the pilot's eye AND the copilots eye
I don't know about you, but I like my pilots being able to see. 100%. Not suffering from temporary blindness trying to land at night.
they probably have a way for the tower to land the plane in case of emergency.
Uh huh..sure. That is simply reused technology from the alien ship stored at hangar 18.
But the human eyes have 2x more green receptors than of the other colors, and are therefore lots more sensitive to green.
Not saying laser filters are a superb idea, but anyway.
i ask because a friend of mine experienced a plane accelerating to take off after trying to land. after reaching a higher altitude, he heard over the PA that "they had to abort the first landing attempt because there was another plane on the runway." (no joke.)
if they can divulge such information to the passengers, can they do the same about a "hot" topic like being lasered, provided the passengers are safe in the end?
From this, not only do I presume that you don't have a pilots license, but it appears that you have never actually seen the inside of a commercial airliner.
Anyone who disagrees with me is a scared little wussie and probably voted for BushIn my case, you are wrong. I voted for the other wealthy patrician.
Who are they getting to write these warnings, my Mom? "Don't look stray dogs in the eye or they might get mad and bite you." I would think this would be common sense, but then again, we are talking about the same people who brought you terrorist-proofing your home with duct tape.
You light up my life...
DROS - Open-Source Robot Software
all the pieces will come together when its realized the 'criminals' are really a band of volunteer optomitrists providing free lasik to pilots who cant take time off work. thats service.
The really dangerous lasers are infrared. Certain frequencies in the infrared do major corneal or retinal damage. This happens without the eye owner knowing that it's happening.
XML causes global warming.
How you actually injure a pilot with a laser?
I can't make out the HEAD of a pilot 100 yards away, let alone bullseye the pupil! Throw in the fact that the plane is moving, and, it just seems unlikely that you could actually hit someone in the face. Maybe if you had a good scope attached to it, and the plane was coming right at you. But still: when a plane takes off or lands, its nose is up; and when a plane is in flight, the cockpit is obscured by the nose of the aircraft. How the heck could you possible hit a pilot square in the pupil with a laser?
Just doesn't seem possible to me. At least, highly unlikely (or very lucky) to actually hit that pupil.
Explain?
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Unfortunately, its less convenient and less effective for me to keep a chainsaw handy to protect my family.
If you've found a way to make Gamma ray lasers, I *STRONGLY* suggest you patent them, and then step up for your nobel prize in physics.
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
It is if some politically well-connected company can make big bucks doing so...
On the other hand, it might have a much more significant deterent effect if people actually used chainsaws to protect their house/family...whoever is chasing you with that chainsaw has to be crazy even to think about using it...crazy enough to use it...
Now even laser pointers are WMD...
:-(
But the majority of business-class america is white middle aged males.
How will they do this? They can't invoke things like the Patriot Act on them. That would be unconstitutional.
Then again... we know every Arab in North America participated in 9/11. Or at least that's what our government has been trying to get us all to believe.
So lets go into random offices, and arrest business men... since we need to get the WMD.
Doesn't necessarily follow, laser light has other properties that may be used to block them. Their light is, for example, coherent.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
I posted a reply to an earlier comment as an Anonymous Coward regarding trying to hit a 4-8 mm target with a ground-based laser pointer. Think about it. Do you really want your pilot to wear goggles that would cut almost half of the visible spectrum? Last time I looked, most commercial planes have cockpit windows above the nose of the plane, making it hard to get a direct bead on a pilots pupil moving at 200-600 km/hr from a handheld device on the ground from hundreds of meters away. This is just a bunch of FUD.
Someone please mod this WAY up. I just finished a post suggesting that the "threat" was being hyped for some reason, but I couldn't think of what that reason might be, except maybe to maintain terror hysteria for political reasons. I think you may have hit the bullseye there.
This isn't a case of someone with a laser pointer sitting in their backyard and zapping an airport 15 miles away. THAT'S NOT POSSIBLE. Let's briefly cover why: A handheld laser pointer is likely not capable of reaching that sort of range. I can't say that for sure, but it's pretty unlikely. Plus, a human hand, or even a tripod, aiming said laser pointer over 15 miles and tracking a jet that's still moving over 100MPH is not something you'd pick up in a matter of minutes. It'd take a lot of practice and intent. Nor is it accidental, you don't point a laser up in the sky and zap a cockpit by accident. You'd hit the bottom of the plane, not the windows. This is talking about things happening on takeoff or landing. What would be necessary for zapping someone's cockpit is a very nice tripod on a flat and level surface, a scope or other optics system, a mechanical assist system to keep the laser steady and move it smoothly, and either the training or computer program to track the plane (dunno that a program to track a specific object like that exists, but I wouldn't doubt it). Then of course you'd need a high powered laser, and not something like a laser pointer (a little LED with a nice lens, last I checked), but an actual gas, dye, or crystal laser. Does someone with that sort of equipment pointed at an aiport sound like just some innocent, wholesome people out to exercise their right to point a laser wherever they want? All that being said, it is pretty useless to tell people not to look at the laser. Kinda like telling someone not to put burning things in their mouth...
I agree on the half the EM spectrum part-- building general purpose anti-laser goggles for use in aircraft is not really feasible at this point.
.1 degrees is common even on relatively good industrial lasers; this means you need to only be able to aim within .1 degrees of your target, which is of lesser difficulty than say, aiming a rifle accurately at 100yds.
Hitting the small target isn't so hard though, because lasers aren't really so coherent. A beam spread of at least
This really sucks. Pointing lasers at aircraft is easy to do, distracting to the pilot at laser pointer power levels and gravely injuring at common industrial laser power levels, and nearly impossible to defend against.
Actually I agree with you up to the point that there are legal uses for guns, no matter how some might disagree. I'm not into hunting, but I've shot at targets before and had fun doing it. Despite how you feel about either activity, they are legal. Likewise, a bow and arrow can kill, which is something that was required in my high school P.E. class (thus indirectly sanctioned by the state (which happens to be Texas, for what it's worth)). Arrows have no practical purpose other than killing, and it is as illegal to threaten others with one in public as it is a gun or kitchen knife.
When it comes down to it, most governments have a double-standard over what should be considered legal for the public to own and use that may be harmful. Violence and destruction are not in themselves illegal yet, or else football and monster truck shows would be banned.
In the case of laser pointers, the consumer is warned about the dangers on the product (do not stare into beam for class I & II, worse for III and IV) and using them in a weapon-like function, whether intentional or just irresponsibly, is still putting the safety of others into jeopardy.
I think this is a great program. Not because I am woried about terrorist blinding airplanes... I think that is highly unlikely. Nor am I worried about lasers in general.
But, freaking out about laser pointers zapping airplanes has no effect on ordinary people. Better to have the government freaking out about lasers, then cracking down on email or the internet because it could be used for terrorism, or hatching some new profiling scheme that results in innocent people being harrassed.
Better to have the government paranoid about something that is extremly obscure and almost no-one has any legit reason for doing (I mean, what is the legit reason for tagging aircraft with lasers?), than have the government paranoid about something that would actually harm our personal liberties.
There is a downside: I am sure that it is going to cost billions of dollars to build the "anti-laser-pointing-at-airplanes" government infrastructure. But it is not like they aren't going to waste the money on something useless anyway. At least this isn't useless AND destructive like so many other things.
And don't mod this +5 funny, mod it +5 insightful! It might be absurd, but it is the truth!
I'm more worried about these: Stinger
It seems we need another subject to distract us from the fact our President lied to us over WMD's in Iraq.
The timing of this "treat" is very suspicious;
Much like the timing of September 11, 2001;
When we wanted answers about the California energy scandal and the Enron links to the Bush administrations "Energy Talks".
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Incredible.
I'm wondering why the FCC hasn't outlawed the common lasers yet... I mean, they regulate the cable industry so heavily that if there is a certain percentage of cable leak, that could POSSIBLY (however unlikely) affect an aircraft overhead, the cable system is shutdown immediately and fined enormous amounts of money until the problem is located and taken care of.
The thing is, usually it isn't the cable company that's at fault... its the moran people messing around with their cable.
So how is it that people selling lasers aren't responsible for the people they sell them to?
I guess my analogy is weak at best, but it still seems to hold SOMETHING.
You're nothing; like me.
The SlashDOT released a press statement warning of imminent high traffic to US DOT websites.
Okay, I've been wondering something since this story came out.
I can't hold my laser pointer on a car 2 streets down, how the HELL do you come within hundreds of FEET of a plane, let alone hit the cockpit????
Good.
Can we monitor idiot teenagers using these in theatres?
Although to be honest, I haven't seen one of those being used in years, and I usually go to showings where immature teens aren't at the movies (weekday nights late, for example).
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Glass and plastic highly attenuate the lowest IR frequencies. CO2 lasers, for instance, generally need a special kind of crystal for an optical window.
Near IR might pass though (semiconductor laser, for example).
Wait - coherence and diffusion are orthogonal: the beam can spread while all the "waves" peaks are precisely in phase. Lasersafe goggles for pilots does seem really stupid, though, about as stupid as confiscating every nailclipper people bring aboard, while leaving checked luggage unscanned.
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make install -not war
For those who keep saying "this isn't a big deal," or complaining about how infeasible this is, perhaps it would help to read about what actual pilots think?
Professional Pilots Rumour Network: Professional Laser injures Delta pilot's eye thread.
It's "no one," not "noone." Who the hell is noone anyway?
So what are they going to do about heat guided projectiles?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Frequency doubling crystals are probably readily available to those who might want to use these for nefarious purposes - check your handy physics lab catalog. We used a pretty cheap one to double NdYAG to optical frequencies (a nice green).
XML causes global warming.
Thank you, Anonymous Coward, for representing your vile subspecies so well. Your only worthwhile statement in dispute of my post is just an excuse to post foul, queer, violent and misspelled invective. You have already killed yourself - don't go changing!
--
make install -not war
Not sure if anyone knows, but do laser guided weapons use visible lasers or IR lasers?
subject says it all really
Instead of sorting out the middle east you are worrying about people shining lasers at airplanes??? The dept of homeland security is doing its job well- increasing paranoia at home to blind the public to crimes committed abroad in their name, and to further enable the restriction of civil liberties.
kin242.net
I don't think this is really going to cause much cash expenditure as such -- it's more of a "now you can't blame us" memo. Of course, an air-traffic controller's time is probably worth something, and so is the time of the police-officer who ends up reading the report, but police follow up low-priority incidents all the time. Besides, the person responsible for the government spending said cash is the yahoo who tries to shine a high-powered laser at an airplane. What would you do if you were driving down an interstate highway and someone shined a laser at you from an overpass?
(Fortunately, air traffic over the Mauna Kea Visitor Information Station, where such things happen nightly, is minimal to zero.)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Someone please tell me WHY someone can face jail time for pointing up at the sky ?
Can you see why someone should face jail time for standing on an overpass over a busy freeway and dropping buckets of paint onto the windshields of cars passing by underneath?
Thanks in part to the stories being pushed lately in the media, lots of "monkey-see monkey-do" copycats are now deliberately shining lasers into the windshields of airplanes just for kicks.
At night planes have much more than just "little white lights" too. There's a red one on the left wingtip, a green one on the right wingtip, a steady white one on the tail, and also at least one or more flashing stobes that can be either red or white depending on the make, model and vintage of the aircraft. They're practically lit up like Christmas trees and very easy to discern against the stars, especially when you live far enough away from city lights to actually see stars nowadays.
A couple of quick points
Aaah! I'm blind!
Likewise, a bow and arrow can kill, which is something that was required in my high school P.E. class
Killing was required in your high school PE class?
Damn.
Can't they just wear sunglasses? How about two-way mirrors or reflective trooper shades?
Yours fnord truly, Cecile Hagbard fnord.
As I'd mentioned earlier, and Tom Clancy exhibited in 'Debt of Honor', if you want to blind an airplane crew, you don't even need a laser; one of those high-power xenon lights will do nicely, and has the bonus of being easily passed off as photo/videography equipment.
And that book was written back in 1994...
- White Knight of the Order of Mihoshi Enthusiasts
If one looks at the cockpit of ANY commerical jet, you will notice some characteristics that invalidate the use of lazers on pilots.
for example:
1. The cockpit is on the forward top end of the fuselage. We mere mortals are resigned to walking on the ground.
2. There is NO WAY a pilot can stick their head out of a window. The wind sheer would be a very nasty personal event.
3. A Jets air speed is a number greater than 250 knots. That's fast.
4. NOT ALL LAZERS ARE IN THE VISIBLE SPECTRUM.
It sounds like to me that someone has read one Thomas Clancy book to many.