New Laser Makes Pirates Wish They Wore Eye-Patches

vieux schnock writes "The New Scientist has an article about a new laser developed by a company in Farnborough, UK, that aims to deter modern high-seas pirates. Devised as a 'warning shot' to 'distract suspected pirates rather than harm them,' the meter-wide beam can scan the pirates' 6-metre skiffs and make it difficult for them to aim their AK-47 or rocket-propelled grenades at the ship."

Comments

Re:I have a better idea

[Jeremy Erwin]

It's actually quite difficult to snipe from a moving ship.

Will not work

[Kupfernigk]

This will not work because:

• Have you ever considered the difficulty of using, say, an Armalite on the bridge of a cargo ship? Last time I checked, snipers did not use moving platforms, or aim at rapidly moving targets . Therefore, range would be greatly reduced.
• It could be several seconds, or even tens of seconds, between clear shots. So: you wound one pirate. The others start firing RPGs and AK-47s. These do not need to be accurate.
• If pirates assume armed response, they will start shooting the moment they come within range. Therefore, casualties will mount.

Bottom line: I suggest before coming up with idiotic suggestions, you actually google a bit of naval history. (And yes, I did do a feasibility study on missile attack defenses based on cannon, not rifles, and even they are not a very good defense.)

Actually... green light.

[denzacar]

From TFA:

"Sunglasses wouldn't help," he says – in fact, wearing them would only exacerbate the effect. That's because the glasses would not affect the green laser light – chosen because that colour is particularly irritating – but the laser would appear even brighter contrasted against the darkened background.

I'm guessing they think that people who can put their hands on automatic weapons and RPGs, sales and purchasing of which is regulated/prohibited in most of the world - won't be able to put their hands on some $25 protective glasses sales and purchasing of which is not regulated/prohibited anywhere in the world.

Re:Actually... green light.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

More to the point, laser power levels are rather tricky because anything on the low end can be blocked with relatively cheap optical safety hardware which(while it probably isn't currently available at Arms 'r Us' Mogadishu branch it is quite easily and legitimately available for not much money) and anything on the high end, high enough to avoid such cheap and simple countermeasures, will blind unprotected human targets in moments. Given the, no doubt excellent, quality of care for burn victims and the blind in the area, that may actually be less humane than a bullet to something vital.

Since dealing with pirates is not considered "war", the fact that using weapons designed for blinding is a war crime probably won't be an issue(in the same way that cops can use chemical weapons, even though soldiers can't); but any laser powerful enough to discourage all but serious n00b pirates is really not a nice device. Blinding, burns, the whole deal. If you are willing to blind and burn, you might as well skip the pricey, unproven wiz-bang shit and just use lethal weapons.

Re:Actually... green light.

[marcansoft]

To throw some numbers in: The glasses that the GP linked to are OD 4 for 532nm light (i.e. green Nd:YAG lasers, which are basically guaranteed to be the type used by this weapon). That means they block 99.99% of the beam at that wavelength. That's quickly going to turn any beam designed to be borderline non-permanently-damaging into barely a bother.

In fact, I just ran a quick test. I have a 30mW green pointer, which is definitely unsafe for direct eye exposure. I expanded the beam with a lens to about a 20cm radius, which is eye-safe at this power level. Looked at it thought my glasses (I actually have that same model), and it was just a very slight orange glow, about on par with an indicator LED. Took the goggles off and it was very annoying (I had an afterimage for a few minutes). I imagine the laser weapon will be closer to the damage threshold than my quick test, but still, the glasses will totally destroy any effect unless the laser runs at power levels much higher than eye-safe ones.

Or, testing with the (definitely eye unsafe) collimated 30mW, through the glasses, onto a wall: the green dot is barely visible. I'm going going to try pointing it into my eye (see below), but that mount of light is not going to bother anyone.

Note for anyone wanting to try this: don't unless you really know what you're doing. In particular, looking into the bare beam with glasses on is a very bad idea. You probably won't damage your eyes with the green light, but these cheap chinese pointers tend to lack IR filters, and that can screw you since the glasses won't block IR (worse, your blink response won't trigger and you'll slowly cook your retina). In fact, I can see a slight deep red glow around the projected green dot going through the glasses, which indicates there's a considerable amount of leaked IR, probably well above the damage threshold (if you can see IR, there's a lot of it).

Re:Aren't lasers intended to blind "illegal"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects

Protocol IV on Blinding Laser Weapons prohibits the use of laser weapons specifically designed, as their sole combat function or as one of their combat functions, to cause permanent blindness to unenhanced vision, that is to the naked eye or to the eye with corrective eyesight devices. The High Contracting Parties shall not transfer such weapons to any State or non-State entity.

Root cause of the problem

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The root cause of the problem is that, most port authorities and countries prohibit a merchant marine ship from having arms on board. So cargo ship with machine guns would not be permitted to dock on most harbors and ports in the world. That is the reason for these ships from being armed. These guys are coming up with stupid weapons like water cannons, beamed sound waves, and now lasers, because they would not be called "arms" by the ports.

Simpler solution would be to have a ship or a platform offshore, just on the international waters as close to the port as possible to act as an armory. Cargo ships check in their weapons into the armory, sail into the port, unload, reload, return, pick up their weapons and go their way. Between the armory and the port, a distance of about 10 or 20 miles, the Navy or the Coast Guard of the country should provide escort and patrol services with destroyers and cutters.

That would be a sane and cheap solution understandable to one and all. All the news reports about gizmos like laser beams really have an entirely different purpose. Some company somewhere making a key component of such a system is looking for investment or begging to be sold out. The PR firms step in, come up with such "news" stories and create some media interest. Once the company got bought out or got its investment goals met, these news reports also would melt away like fog.

Cost and international treaties are why no weapons

[fantomas]

Cost and international treaties are two big reasons why merchant ships aren't armed. If you want military on board with weapons, well a 24/7 hour crew is going to cost a fair bit of money. Merchant shipping tries to cut costs as much as possible.And you aren't just going to put a crate of machine guns and sniper rifles on board and hope that the ship's cook or the 18 year trainee engineer on a cruise ship are going to know how to operate them correctly in an emergency situation, probably more likely to end up hurting themselves or the passengers than anybody else.

Plus international treaties come into play. It's all well and good suggesting you're going to mount miniguns etc or even just AK47s on your ship but a lot of countries aren't too happy about armed merchant ships turning up in their harbours. Can't imagine American authorities would be too happy about accepting an Iranian ship sailing into New York with a crew of marines on board manning deck mounted rapid fire machine guns.

Re:I have a better idea

[Kral_Blbec]

There's a town somewhere in the US (can't remember where and I don't care to google it) that enacted a statute requiring every adult to possess and carry a handgun. Crime dropped like a stone. No Western reenactments on record yet.

Re:I have a better idea

[kanto]

Kennesaw, Georgia

From that link: "Statistical analysis of the data over a longer period of time did not show any evidence that the law reduced the rate of home burglaries in Kennesaw." so it's more a viral meme than a fact. Forcing people to own a weapon would imo lead to more weapons nobody will miss and that end up in the wrong hands; kids or burglars (hey, every house has to have at least a gun to steal).