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Laser Strikes On Aircraft Increasing In Frequency (usatoday.com)
puddingebola writes: The FAA is reporting a record number of laser strikes on aircraft for 2015. From the article: "The Federal Aviation Administration recorded 5,352 laser strikes through Oct. 16, up from 2,837 for all of 2010. ... Some airports have reported more than 100 laser strikes this year: Los Angeles had 197; Phoenix had 183; Houston had 151; Las Vegas had 132, and Dallas-Fort Worth had 115. On July 15, during a 90-minute period, 11 airliners and one military aircraft reported laser strikes near New York City-area airports. Those incidents remain under investigation by the FAA, FBI and New Jersey state police."
I mean, if they keep increasing in frequency, eventually someone'll just fire a UV laser and nobody'll be able to see it. The next guy brings an X-Ray laser and it's a self-limiting problem, at least for everyone within a few thousand feet of ground zero.
Why do people want to point their laser pointers at planes? What does that do for them? Are they getting off to it?
These stories get more and more attention of the media and every time they will emphasize that this is considered as a federal crime for which penalty is severe fines and possibly jail time. But this does not seem to be at all effective with the population.
The question is, are people doing this out of a really bad intention or are just not intelligent enough to understand the risks and the sentences they are facing for, literally, no personal gain?
It's the only way to be sure.
So do they count a laser the happens to be shined 'near' a plane or are these all directly aimed at/in the cockpit? They specifically not that none of the over 5k "strikes" caused any injury so if any actually penetrated the cockpit they didn't hit any eyes. I'm picturing pilots reporting a laser that they happen to see nearby. I have an extremely powerful laser that finds itself pointing at the sky all the time. I'd never shine one at a plane anyway but most of the time I have comfort in the fact my laser shining straight upward couldn't hit a pilot's eyes anyway unless they happened to be banking at the wrong time. Only time I'd even have a good angle is on take-off or landing. SO long rambling run-on question later: What do they define as a "Laser Strike" how intentional / directed does it have to be or are the standards for a "strike" fairly low?
Lasers are pretty light, but who can throw that far?
So is this just people with green laser pointers? If so, I want one so I can try to knock a few out of the sky. Any word on what they do to birds?
I am surprised terrorists haven't tried using this to make planes crash by trying to blind the pilots.
Hell, maybe they are.
A single laser is pretty weak at long distance that wouldn't get you spotted, but multiple could easily be combined together.
All it would take is someone combining a bunch of lasers together with duct tape, buttons pressed down, wired to battery and switch, point & blind at several miles.
That'd be a very dangerous thing indeed.
Make it those green lasers and you could cause some serious fucking damage to aviation landing since it is still pretty human-based.
Of course, luckily there is a very cheap solution, filter sheets over the windows or pilots eyes. (preferably a helmet just to be sure their faces don't get burned by green lasers since they are much cheaper now)
It really should be done because it is only a matter of time before one of these causes a serious accident.
Common laser filters are cheap as hell, making them a requirement or fashionable thing for frequent flying operators would solve it.
However, we are speaking about the aviation industry, one that literally had some companies having just barely enough fuel to get to destinations, some basically "running on fumes" in extreme cases over the past 10 years. I don't think they could give a damn about safety of staff.
As an engineer ive been against seeing this kind of increase in frequency since DAY ONE. from 450 to 520 nanometer was appalling enough but 600 nanometer?! seriously? you kids messing around with those diodes are playing with fire.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Where are the statistics about the blinded pilots and crashed planes? Without these facts there is no way to tell if there is a problem.
...omphaloskepsis often...
I hope the investigators can shed some light on this situation.
I'm sure the "Laser Strike Taskforce" will encourage pilots to file a report every time they witness a laser in their life whether they are flying or not. Gotta get those federal $$dollars$$ somehow.
The solution is obvious, require registration of all lasers. It's going to work for "drones," right?
>
Ask Norm ... I mean Colonel Sanders.
I consider a laser strike to be a laser weapon being used to shoot down a plane. If they are calling people pointing at constellations who can't even see the planes at night "laser strikes" they should be prepared to be laughed into we don't care mode by pretty much everyone. It isn't like these are attacks.
Before anyone defends these criminals, please realize flying at night is not like driving at night. Driving you have to deal with bright lights from oncoming traffic and your own headlamps so night vision is not gained.. Flying you only have the dull glow of the instruments and moon or starlight. A bright lazer in hitting a windshield cockpit is like a camera flash. It blinds both pilot and copilot. This can cause a crash during landing. The front window is not easy to hit with a lazer. Therefore, this cannot be accidental. Also unlike military aircraft that have coatings and protections against this kind of attach civilian aircraft do not.
That's overkill - just mount a few, small laser guided bombs onto random commercial aircraft and evolution will take care of the problem in a generation or two.
lazers are for luddites!
My question is; why does this government that just loves to control everything and everyone still allow these cheap laser pointers to be sold for $5 at gas stations, and Wal-Marts? why not just ban them? Ooops, 5 years too late.
So they've gone from the red end of the spectrum to the ultraviolet??? Egads!
Better known as 318230.
The airline industry already have a style of sunglasses named after them, why not wear those!
It's not like the pilots need to see anything for the 99.9% of the time commercial aircraft spend on autopilot anyway.
I know it seems to go against the whole "ban lasers" rhetoric but lasers aren't going anywhere. So the logical solution seems to retrofitting planes to deal with them. I'm not saying there shouldn't continue to be laws to make it unlawful to intentionally point a laser at an airplane. Simply that it is foolish to think you are going to be able to sidestep installing safety measures in the planes by attempting to litigate your problems away.
Last night NBC nightly news was calling them "laser attacks on aircraft".
The entire thing is overblown hyperbole. It's a bright light. Deal with it.
All the stories of be blinded by laser shine, yet not one single person or pilot blinded by it.
Unless they are closer than 500 feet from the laser (a powerful 50-100mW), serious risk is non-existent.
http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1068&context=jate
http://www.slms.org/blind.pdf
Hey selfish fuck,
At the range and airspeed I'm flying, I can't see your laser unless you're deliberately dazzling me. There's enough dispersion that it's not the little pencil line you think you have; it's a meter across or more, and it blinds me and my copilot. I've had asshats like you negligently try to kill me and everybody on my airplane, and I think you should be publicly flogged., It's not negligent homicide; it's deliberate and will kill people.
I believe a laser strike has to effect the cockpit. A strike does not have to cause injury to be a problem. A pilot's vision can be dazzled/distracted without being injured.
I have an extremely powerful laser that finds itself pointing at the sky all the time.
If you are anywhere near an airport I would be careful.
I live about 5 miles from a commercial airport and planes fly over all the time.
I'm curious how someone on the ground is able to aim at the windshield of the cockpit from the ground. It seems like geometry of shining a laser at a plane would be such that if you were reasonably close to a plane, the windshield wouldn't be line of sight to an observer on the ground.
Maybe if you were fairly close, at a higher elevation and the plane was taking off pretty much in your direction.
I can see how helicopters or other aircraft with more of a completely transparent nose would be vulnerable to ground observers shining lasers, but jetliners look to me like they have the cockpit windshield on the top half of the nose hemisphere.
What am I missing here?
What do you count as injury? I've heard stories about lasers aimed at aircraft where they reported the pilot was temporarily dazzled by the light shining into the cockpit. Probably any laser beam visible to the pilot would be considered close enough to report. If your laser really isn't pointed anywhere near any planes I'm sure the pilots aren't seeing anything.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
So, it has to cause permanent blindness before it passes the Anonymous Idiot test?
How can anyone be so wrong about "not one single person..." in this age of Google?
http://www.kob.com/article/sto...
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news...
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/he...
The list goes on and on.
Maybe this video will help you, some schmuck lighting up a news chopper, caught on film. It doesn't take much, particularly at night. In the video, when the laser hits just right, the entire canopy lights up green. Even through the video camera, the light shows as very, very bright, bright enough to burn the eyelid and cornea leading to blindness (which is not cool when you need to be piloting an aircraft).
It should be common knowledge by now that this is stupid stupid shit. It's only sheer luck that this idiocy hasn't incapacitated a pilot to the point that the aircraft went down.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Laser strikes on aircraft are also decreasing in wavelength.
When they come knocking at your door you can tell us all about it. And how does an obj that has zero intelligence find itself pointing up at the sky all the time? The article say pointing a laser AT planes is a crime btw.
Jack of all trades,master of none
You're gonna get them banned and fuck it up for the rest of us. Knock it off.
And if you know someone who does this, kick them right in the genitals.
military aircraft (and some others) have FLIR cameras that could pinpoint the location of the wannabee jedis and go fuck them up.
This is interesting. What does pointing a laser at a constellation do for you? And how is it that you can see something 400 light years away, but not a plane with blinking lights at 30,000 feet?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I've been lasered when flying my plane. The beam is big at these long distances, so ti isn't a tiny beam going into your eye, it lights up the cockpit and looks like a very bright point of light. Since your eye focuses the light to a point, lasers can be dangerous at fairly low power levels.
In a plane even if the beam is not damaging it is very distracting, and distraction is a major cause of aircraft accidents. in my case they kept the beam on the plane for many seconds so it was clearly intentional.
Its pretty common - several pilots I've spoken to have been lasered. This is the second time its happened to me.
From your own sources (TV news stations known for their dramatization):
1. "In fact, my night vision was probably degraded for 15 minutes."
2. "[It] actually blinded us for a split second,"
3. "Yes sir, 5,000 feet. Two green flashes, and it caught the first officer in his eye," the pilot said.
An FAA preliminary incident report described the pilot's injury as minor but did not provide details.
The list of over dramatized false claims goes on and on. But the fact... The facts are that even a very powerful laser at any distance greater than 500 feet is not harmful. http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1068&context=jate
The facts also lack any serious or even remotely long term injury. In fact, they lack any injury whatsoever to pilots, passengers or aircraft. But, if whining like a pathetic pussy make you feel better, whine on. But realize that no matter how much or how loud you whine, your fears don't change the facts.
I'll bet you live in mortal fear of cell phones on airplanes as well.
Please leave your geek badge at the door if you can't figure that out.
Most laser pointers are class IIIb laser devices. The class III means not at all eye safe (though it isn't a burn hazard and you don't have to worry about specular reflection from a target other than a mirror.) The b part means that the manufacturers spread some money around to come up with a class of lasers called, "sure it isn't eye safe but really no one is going to shine it directly in their eyes, will they?" But now they are so cheap that people can buy them as if they were toys. What do you think the chances are that some parent will buy a laser pointer for a child (or maybe someone will just carelessly leave it out) -- then the child (thinking it is a toy anyway) will shine it in his eyes just to see what happens. Heck I would be really surprised if this hasn't happened already.
On a side note I would imagine that if the plane were at a very high altitude then it would not be as easy as you may think to shine a laser pointer on any part of the plane (let alone into the cockpit window.) Then again if the plane is at a high altitude then a beam from a common laser pointer will likely expand enough to no longer be that dangerous. I guess this is only a when the plane is very close to the ground almost immediately after a take-off or right before a landing.
If this really continues to be a problem then maybe the government should step in and only allow laser pointers to operate at certain wavelengths. Then Boeing and Airbus can put coatings on their windows to block those wavelengths (turn the cockpit window into a giant set of laser goggles.) Or maybe people can just stop shining laser points at airplanes. Just because something is cheap doesn't mean it is just a toy.
A traditional technique even in astronomy classes. Ever had to explain to someone else where to look in the sky? Much easier to just point a beam that they can follow.
I don't think pilots would be able to see the laser unless the beams are _really_ close to the plane.
If the laser beam is passing through empty space, there's no way to see it. The beam has to hit something to be visible. The atmosphere has some stuff in it, even on a clear night, which is why shining laser pointers at the sky is useful for pointing out starts. However, my guess is that the beam will only be visible to people nearly colinear with the beam and won't be like a blaster shot that's visible even if it pases far from you.
In short if you're shining a beam more than ~20 m from a plane on a clear night, I doubt anyone would even notice it. If you get closer than 20 m, then at best, you're being seriously negligent. If the sky isn't clear, why on earth are you shining a laser into the sky?
Do me a favor and gather up the wattage of the sun vs the wattage of the brightest light on a plane. Next get me the diameter of the sun compared with that of said blinking light.
Also, there are these things called clouds. If you could get me some data on how many nights a year one of them is large enough to obscure a plan while not being large enough to obstruct vision of the entire sky I'd appreciate that. Once we've got all this information compiled please repeat the question if you still have one.
A device of nominal cost appears to be able to endanger or debilitate multi-million dollar airplanes. Hmmm . . .
I wasn't trying to challenge you, I just really didn't know.
On a clear night, how do you see the beam part of the laser? And how do you see the "pointer" end of the laser if the constellation is 400 light years away? Does it bounce off something in the general direction of the constellation?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Sneezing also temporarily blinds a pilot, but somehow the planes still fly
"I wasn't trying to challenge you, I just really didn't know."
In that case I sincerely apologize for the snarky tone but instead hope my snarky response was at least informative. In short, the light on a plane is tiny and low power relative to sheer enormity and light output of a star the difference is vast even from so far away and there are so many they fill the entire sky where the plane is in just one place and easily hidden by cloud cover.
You can see the pointer because even though the sky might seem clear to us it is still filled with particles of dirt and moisture that highlight the beam. Actually you might even have seen this with high powered lights that aren't lasers when a car dealership has an event or there is a fair/circus or the like. Sometime those lights are powerful enough to see a beam that projects a fair distance up. On some nights you just see it reflect off the clouds but other nights you can actually see a beam project into the air.
Also often a night seems clear but there is still plenty of wispy cloud cover which will highlight where a beam is pointing.
A sufficiently bright laser pointer will be visible as a beam in the sky, because it lights up all the dust particles and water droplets that you normally can't see. The effect is a visible line pointing from the pointer to the target, that nearby observers can then use to see where the pointer is talking about.
You're an embarrassment to:
your family.
your country.
your gender.
your species.
Even your dog is ashamed of you.
How fucking stupid do you have to be to blindly accept and believe that something is a major problem when, even after more than 30,000 reported incidents, absolutely no harm of any kind whatsoever has been caused.
Not even a single go around after more 30,000 reported incidents?
The total amount of light produced by even the most powerful handheld lasers is not very much, and quickly loses its brilliance when spread over a circle a few meters in diameter. At one mile, a 2mrad beam will be approximately 10 feet in diameter. A 1W laser would then have an intensity of 0.138W/m^2, or 0.0138mW/cm^2. That's nothing. The sun is over 100 times brighter than that.
Daylight. Regular daylight is more than 100 times brighter than the lasers hitting these aircraft from hundreds or thousands of feet way.
If the risk was real, the only logical solution would be filtering films on aircraft wind shields. No one is even suggesting this because the risk is ridiculously overblown.
'Ban lasers, it's our only hope.' Legislate the fictitious problem.
First red, then green then blue so the next higher frequency must be violet.
If it doesn't get into the cockpit or cabin, how would the flight crew know that somebody was shining one at the plane?
I lived about 10 blocks West of the Sears tower and used to take a cheap laser pointer to the park with me when I walked my dog, because she likes to chase it around (yeah, I heard it wasn't really safe, but the dog is 16 years old and she doesn't seem concerned about the possible dangers).
I can see the pointer on the side of buildings blocks away, but I can't see any beam. Is that because those cheap laser pointers don't have the power of the fancy emerald ones? If I blow smoke in front of the laser pointer, I can see a beam for a second, but not otherwise unless it's foggy.
Thanks for the informative response. Now I'm gonna have to go get an expensive laser and point it around. If I get in trouble, I'll tell them you said it was OK.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I've been lasered when flying my plane. The beam is big at these long distances, so ti isn't a tiny beam going into your eye, it lights up the cockpit and looks like a very bright point of light. Since your eye focuses the light to a point, lasers can be dangerous at fairly low power levels.
In a plane even if the beam is not damaging it is very distracting, and distraction is a major cause of aircraft accidents. in my case they kept the beam on the plane for many seconds so it was clearly intentional.
Its pretty common - several pilots I've spoken to have been lasered. This is the second time its happened to me.
Sounds like there's money to be made by an enterprising individual that creates a coating that blocks key frequencies or at least scatters them reasonably well without obstructing the wind screen's optics too much. Being that this is dealing with avionics, I'd imagine the testing and licensing would take years though. Do you think pilots would find any value in that at some reasonable (relatively speaking - owning a plane or boat is like hooking your wallet up to a vacuum) price?
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
I thought the justification for restricting the sales of high-powered lasers in the US was to prevent exactly this behaviour. If this policy is useless, just let me buy lasers.
Clearly the solution is to create a registration program and have it in place before the holiday shopping season when, no doubt, millions will receive lasers as stocking stuffers. That'll definitely stop people from shining them at aircraft.
If the beam is big, average power entering your pupil will be very low. E.g. 1W in a 1m2 beam means 30uW into a 30mm2 pupil. Harmless. Note that average diffuse daylight is hundreds times that.
If the beam is thin, chances that it can remain aimed straight into a pupil for an extended time are nil.
Either way, eye damage is next to impossible.
I imagine it's going to be nigh impossible to make laser shielding without knowing the exact wavelength of the laser in question, and that can of course vary.
Unless you go the exterior camera + VR helmet route. Which could be cool.
It would be like making the cockpit glass out the same stuff they make laser safety goggles out of. The thing is, you can't easily filter out just one wavelength of light, so the safety goggles for green lasers are orange tinted, and the red laser glasses are all green tinted. I'm guessing most pilots don't want orange or green windows on their plane. And if you wanted to filter both the red and green wavelengths you might as well just paint over the windows.
Maybe if they actually build those planes where the pilots don't have windows, they can have some mechanism that drops the appropriate filter in front of the camera when the plane gets hit with the laser.
"Apk doesn't think DNS servers are worth running & believes Microsoft Active Directory can run w/out DNS." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday October 27, 2015
Where'd I say it? I say AD needs internal DNS far back as 2007 http://forums.tweaktown.com/wi...
See "To warn users who have ActiveDirectory/AD LAN-WAN setups to NOT use external DNS servers" there on OpenDNS free (I use it) + AD in my security guide.
+ Migrate hosts across a LAN (admin/scripts not GPO)-> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
---
I'm RIGHT on admin priv + hosts update (WFP/SFP)!
"figured out why privilege escalation's a bad thing?" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015
How else can I programmatically update it?
---
"it requires elevation to write hosts" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015
Hypocrite later admits it!
Even MalwareBytes AntiMalware (best one) DEMANDS it or it can't do its job fully like many security tools!
Guess what?
Don't NEED to run my program as ADMIN - I do it here manually vs. auto.
---
"Needing admin privileges every time a program updates is poor design" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015
Users set it, not programmatic impersonation for autoupdate. You design zero & say what's what here?
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"90's technology to fight modern war" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015
Ozymandias/Watchmen per a namesake:
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APK
P.S.=> Continued in #2/4... apk
"Virus scanners/Adblock software don't need admin priv to update" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015 @04:14PM (#50904323)
Stupid, neither does my program! AV does to remove threats - Adblock addons = VASTLY INFERIOR in abilities + efficiency vs. hosts as I've proven & nobody proved me wrong to date!
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"your software does" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015 @04:14PM (#50904323)
No, hosts do due to WFP/SFP!
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"won't reveal your source code" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015 @04:14PM (#50904323)
I don't owe you it. I don't give away work to be stolen by others so it's misused like GOOGLE CHROME http://it.slashdot.org/story/1...
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"What's stopping you from pointing my bank's web site at your private server?" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015 @04:14PM (#50904323)
I don't keep a server. You're a security guru (not - you create no ware for security & your forensics skills = non-existent): Put it in a VM, trace it using process monitor + wireshark to prove it (don't need code) & I only put in hardcodes of fav sites @ top of hosts for speed & reliabilty - you'd spot it easily & bulk of the file is sorted blocked known bad threat origins.
---
"the possibility of being caught, which would be pretty hard to catch w/ such a large hosts file, as no one can go through it manually." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015 @04:14PM (#50904323)
See just above!
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"What are you going to do when Windows gets rid of the hosts file completely?" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015 @04:14PM (#50904323)
Hasn't happened!
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"They have already taken steps to make it useless in Windows 10." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015 @04:14PM (#50904323)
It still works there - who're you bullshitting but yourself you assbergers outism retard?
APK
P.S.=> To be continued in part #3/4... apk
"I guess we should avoid your crap, it looks like it is marked as malware. Good luck getting that removed." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:52PM (#50850445)
62 sources of good repute show + /. users say otherwise:
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+
Same for the 32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
&
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---
MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus per this VERY recent testing of them all http://www.av-test.org/en/news... /.'ers say my work is good too:
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"I like your host file system." - by Karmashock (2415832) on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:57PM (#50489401)
"APK is kinda right... I've given up on JS based adblocking and gone to blackholing in /etc/hosts, just like it was back in the 90s. The computational load has gotten intolerable for any ad-blocking using JS. I've tried his hosts file generating software. It works." - by bmo (77928) on Thursday October 15, 2015 @11:30AM (#50736071)
"his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources" by alexgieg (948359) on Friday September 25, 2015 @09:57AM (#50596461)
---
You tried using Computer Associates another antivirus I turned over on false positives (1/8 over time) & they were caught in ACCOUNTING SCANDALS FRAUD http://www.bing.com/search?q=c...
Reputable source (not): They had to sell off their PC security suite too (crap fraud also) LOWERING the 'threat level' on THAT program (not my hosts file engine) TO ZERO!
* YOU ARE WRONG ON EVERY ACCOUNT NOTED!
APK
P.S.=> To be continued in part #4/4... apk
"but rather than take my advise on various things, he feels that he is allowed to defame me by saying things he knows are not true - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 04, 2015 @10:06AM (#50863109)
Hypocrite, I show you're projecting in my posts. What "advice" can you, an INFERIOR to me, like yourself give?
"I have offered him advise on ways to improve what he does to reduce the feeling of icky his software - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 04, 2015 @10:06AM (#50863109)
I've shown /.'er saying differently - Show us you've done better: YOU can't - & you're "advising"? Talking out your ass on things you haven't done is what you're doing.
"posting them so often that maybe, just maybe, someone will think they are true - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 04, 2015 @10:06AM (#50863109)
Quotes of you are true! You can't keep your word as you're replying to me yet again + projecting what I prove YOU do (AD/DNS lie).
"I don't have time for the Troll APK, and refuse to respond anymore to a post signed APK" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 03, 2015 @04:27PM (#50858983)
No troll. I protect users for free w/ a program that speeds them up, helps reliability, & even anonymity online w/ more abilities & efficiency than ANY other 1 solution doing more w/ less - do you? No.
"Maybe I should change my signature again just to rile him up some more." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 03, 2015 @10:07AM (#50855451) FROM http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
"Rile" me? Childish sig bs is all you've got!
"I have repeatedly refuted his assertions - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 04, 2015 @10:06AM (#50863109)
BS - See my last 4 posts here!
APK
P.S.=>
"I never admitted you were right" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015 @04:14PM (#50904323)
You PROVE I AM FOR ME part #1-#4 of your "Greatest Hits Fails"... apk
Pilots could wear laser goggles (cheaper than doing all the glass) but that only works if you know the laser wavelengths. There are too many different wavelength lasers to block them all
If you pay more money, you can get laser goggles with better color transmission. I've used both cheap red/IR goggles that turn everything green, and I've used nicer ones that have more of a neutral color. But those goggles have typical optical densities of 6 or more for the target wavelength (i.e. they attenuate by a factor of a million or more), which is not needed for the pilots. There are even versions of high power laser goggles called "alignment goggles" that have lower attenuation for when you need to see the beam a little bit for alignment purposes, and even those block way more than pilots would need to.
You can already find glasses intended for pilots that will block 6 or more common laser wavelengths, and still have neutral color and high light transmission for most of the spectrum.
You need to get over your arrogant ignorance and talk to pilots who have been hit.
"Banking at the wrong time" ??!! You need to educate yourself before you hurt someone, cockpit windows provide a much greater opening than you would like to believe.
Oooh sorry I turned my airplane into your laser Mr. Midnight Twiddlefingers; Getting dazzled, temporarily blinded, with a strong risk of permanent damage, and a career change to fruit-ripeness-tester was a small price to pay for being able to maintain entertainment opportunities for street level slack-jaws.
I've had asshats like you negligently try to kill me and everybody on my airplane
How many airplanes have crashed due to lasers being shined at them? Divide that by the total number of flights and you'll see the probability of a plane crashing due to lasers. Of course the numerator will be zero, so the probability is zero. But don't let the truth interfere with your reactionary bullshit. DEATH PENALTY FOR LASERS!
The problem is that the coating also blocks part of the visible light. And pilots want to see outside as well as they can. I don't thing it is worth it : as GP said, lasers are "just" distracting, and relatively uncommon.
Goggles are better IMHO as they can be but and removed as needed, like sunglasses. And because they are not part of the plane, they are certainly less of a hassle regulation-wise.
Regarding your inability to see the beam, I suspect you are using a red laser. It's not so much the quality here ("...an expensive laser..."), but the color of light. I got a cheap green laser from yugster for $5-$10. Just your typical cheap pen laser. You can see that beam pretty well at dusk, no need for darkness. It's also not too difficult to see where it's hitting during daylight (perhaps not as far as you suggest, however, but sunlight kinda does that).
Even in darkness, cheap consumer red laser beams are typically only visible short distances. And while not laser, red light in general is also often used for night time activities for the fact that it isn't particularly "bright" and does not impact one's night vision so much.
So if I am correct and you're using a red laser, and if you happen to enjoy lasers in general, I highly recommend picking up a green laser. The difference in brightness between the two colors is quite a lot.
The color of the laser matters, too. Geeks pointing out constellations are likely using a green laser. A green laser will be more visible both because they are mostly just available as higher-quality devices than the average red laser (which can get as cheap as $2) and because your eyes have more cones to sense green light.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
What possible rational, justifiable reason could you have to point an extremely powerful laser at the sky all the time? Unless you're using it in conjunction with a very sophisticated observatory, that is, and those all have FAA danger zones.
" If I get in trouble, I'll tell them you said it was OK."
I officially endorse that is it green and that I've heard all my life that green is good for the Earth. Also, I read that on the Internet so it must be true.
Every time you use a green laser a Native American stripper walking down the highway in leathers loses his tears.