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How Governments Are Getting Around the UN's Ban On Blinding Laser Weapons
Lasrick writes Despite the UN's 1995 Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons, the world is moving closer to laser weapons in both military and law enforcement situations that can cause temporary and even permanent blindness. Military-funded research in this area continues to be conducted by the Optical Radiation Bioeffects and Safety program, and already "dazzlers" have been in use in Afghanistan. Domestic versions of these weapons are intended for use by law enforcement agencies and in theory cause motion-sickness type illness but not blindness. "But something bright enough to dazzle at 300 meters can cause permanent eye damage at 50 meters, and these devices can be set to deliver a narrow (and more intense) beam."
Used on Navy boats. They manual says "for starting fires", but, of course, anyone that looks towards the fire at the reflected beam is most likely blinded, and anyone can walk in front of it. This is no different. The manual says for dazzling at long distance. "Improper use" or "unintended circumstances" will be the excuse when people start to go blind with any of these weapons.
Last time I mentioned tens of kw fire starting lasers potentially leading to blindness from primary or even greater reflections...people down voted me here.
The Protocol contains a loophole large enough to drive a truck through, never mind some photons:
"Article 3 Blinding as an incidental or collateral effect of the legitimate military employment of laser systems, including laser systems used against optical equipment, is not covered by the prohibition of this Protocol."
As long as the blinding is a side effect (mitigated by "all feasible precautions to avoid the incidence of permanent blindness to unenhanced vision") of a non-blinding purpose(setting things on fire, destroying machine vision/optical sensor gear, 'dazzling', and basically anything else you might feel like using a laser for, it's all legal. That is not exactly fertile ground for any sort of serious arms control, even if lasers weren't comparatively cheap and trivial to build, especially at the modest powers that will really boil your eyeballs but aren't subject to the engineering challenges of aspirational air-defense and antimissile systems.
It gives me no pleasure to say so; blinding is a pretty ugly thing to do; but the Protocol as written is about as effective as forbidding murder; but making it legal to put a bullet through any hat you see, regardless of whether it contains a head or not.
Yes. That is exactly the rule. Weapons that are intended to injure but not kill are illegal, weapons intended to kill are ok. Injuring someone because you tried to kill them and missed is considered acceptable, because not everyone has perfect aim.
In world war 1, countries invented poison gas, which caused blindness and severe lung damage, leaving huge numbers of soldiers badly injured but alive, exactly when battlefield medicine was advancing enough to cause soldiers who were losing an arm or a leg to be far more likely to survive.
This caused everyone to realize that poison gas was an amazing weapon for destroying the enemy country for the next two generations by INJURING soldiers -- all the 18 year old guys who are blind and have bad lungs from your gas attack go home, and are a drag on the economy for 50 years by being unable to work and on intensive health care... Civilized countries take care of their veterans, so you know your enemy would deal with the cost... but a world war with unlimited use of these weapons causing millions of badly injured veterans would basically cripple the economies of winners and losers alike.
Thus, after the war, everyone decided that before the chemists finished perfecting gas weapons, we should all agree to ban them. Laser weapons for blinding, as soon as those became vaguely practical, got the same treatment. Other, more obscure types of weapons get this treatment too.