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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.
..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
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.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
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.
More a matter of strength- 100mw lasers have only gotten cheap in the last couple of months, most laser pointers are only 5mw and would be far too dim to do any damage (as it is, your average 5mw laser has to be held on the pupil for 30 seconds to do any damage. I don't know about you, but my hands shake too much to hold on a stationary target that small at 100 feet, let alone a pilot's eyeball on a jetliner moving past me at 100 MPH).
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
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'.
This entire issue seems a little fishy to me. Laser pointers are not very powerful (as someone else here pointed out), and the accuracy and stability with which someone on the ground would have to hold it in order to keep the (weak and highly diverged) spot on a pilot's retina (in a moving aircraft, no less) for any length of time is very hard to imagine.
But then, I can't think of a reason why the Powers That Be would want to hype the threat, unless a ban on laser pointers was coming for some unrelated and unpublicized reason. Or, perhaps, just to maintain the general level of terror hysteria here in the U.S..
Simple.
a) Appear to be doing SOMETHING to KEEP US SAFE when actually doing worse than nothing;
b) criminalize civilians whenever possible;
c) check just how bloody gullible the public and media is.
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?