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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.
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?
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...
Empty, powerless lives maybe. They suddenly find themselves capable of being a pain in the ass with their gadget, so they act out.
The solution is obvious, require registration of all lasers. It's going to work for "drones," right?
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.
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.
So they've gone from the red end of the spectrum to the ultraviolet??? Egads!
Better known as 318230.
At first I think it was just general stupidity and playing around.
Watching a Laser is interesting, because it isn't something we naturally see, so there is almost a magical quality to it. So shining it at an airplane just to see if it would light up or scatter hitting a propeller seems interesting to try.
However now... I expect it is because it makes the news, so they get a odd sense of satisfaction that news happen because of their action.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
People post goatse links to blind pilots?! I guess that makes sense.
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
Your field of vision of flying is hundreds of miles around you. When it is dark and you have your night vision you can see a lot of what is going on. When you are driving you just need to see a few hundred meters in front of you. And you probably have reflective paint on the road showing you where to drive.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Most are probably just seeing if their laser pointer can hit something that far away.
No matter where you go, there you are.
Not really. Still, they are probably well worth the price.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Fifteen minutes of fame.
Six to 10 years in the penitentiary.
Sounds good to me.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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?
Yeah, I know, I'm rich ... I paid as much for my airplane as a new Civic. Clearly fucking rich. And no, it's not just a private pilot problem, it's mostly helicopter and commercial. I'm only flying at 80 MPH near the ground. The heavies are going closer to 150 MPH. But keep on believing that it's the rich assholes who should be punished, just like George Soros and Occupy told you.
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...
It could be people testing their mosquito killer aiming system.
http://science.slashdot.org/st...
It just has trouble with the optics and keeps targeting aircraft...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
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
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.
Is there special illumination of the instruments that still allows for sufficient field of vision at night? I've got some night blindness and when I do drive at night, I have to dial down the dashboard lights to almost nothing.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
I've got a green laser. It's cool to shine it outside at night, because it creates a very visible beam.
It's also very tempting to shine it at things, to see how far away I can see a reflection. Aircraft a certainly a tempting target, being both moving and fairly far away.
I haven't and won't, because I understand the potential risk, but I do understand the temptation. And there are a lot of stupid people out there.
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?
How stupid do you have to be to think that blindness must be permanent to be a problem? Seriously, how fucking stupid must you be to think that a pilot having degraded night vision, in the vicinity of an airport, is not a problem? Do you have ANY functioning brain cells?
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.
Wow, they're probably rich? They deserve it then!
I drop rocks on cars from freeway overpasses, and I key cars in parking lots. But I only target Teslas and BMWs, so I'm OK.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
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.
There is no safety issue at play. Private or commercial, nobody should be regulating away everyone elses enjoyment of the stars to maximize their enjoyment being part of a tiny minority who gets to look down on the world. These things aren't even really visible except at night and they are flying with instrumentation then. Commercial pilots aren't even actually flying the plane except during takeoff and landing, frequently they are napping in that cockpit.
As for the rich thing.
They are rich and therefore people who are trying to use a federal agency to prevent the people who worked for the wealth they are enjoying from enjoying what is left and free, the stars. I have no sympathy. It is not punishing the rich to support putting them on the same level as everyone who is not rich. It is not punishing the rich to reach the immediate conclusion that any benefit they get to enjoy should be denied immediately if it infringes on everyone who is not rich. There are million times more people in the 99.999% by wealth than the top 0.001% by wealth and since there are million times more of them their interests are a million times more important which makes the least of the common mans interest more valuable than the most important of the top 0.001% percents interests should they conflict.
For example there is a million times more merit to proposing free national mayo clinic level healthcare for everyone but the top 0.001% funded entirely by a tax on the 0.001% than in recognizing their right to property. Especially when the reality is that they no more have a right to property than we have a right to good health the only actual right is the right to take what you can and protect what you can and there are a lot more us ants than there are you grasshoppers.
"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.
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.
One thing I never see published is the details about the flights. Certainly if the pilot is near an airport, especially during landing and takeoff, then obviously the perps are engaging in malicious behavior.
However, my math says that the major airports reported in the article received 778 of the 5,352 reported incidents in 2015. I live in a residential area that is quite some distance from any airport. A substantial number of aircraft violate the 1000 foot above ground level FAA minimum for residential neighborhoods. I have tried, many times, to call someone, somewhere, who might give a shit about this very annoying violation and there isn't anyone who will do anything (including just returning a phone call), short of my hiring a PI and a lawyer.
Most disturbing is the helicopters flying what I estimate to be within 200 feet of my house. Although it is a very sturdily built house, the whole thing shakes when the helicopters pass by. Also incredibly annoying is the dip-shit in his WWII fighter plane practicing his tricks, and sometimes just diving and climbing endlessly.
If I were a lesser person, since I cannot appeal to any authority that will take any action, whatsoever, I might choose to take a more violent approach than just thinking of them as total assholes.
Only slightly less assholes are the clueless journos who report the stories. Usually it comes from the establishment wannabes at Ars Technica, where critical thinking flies out the window, though this time it's USA Today, and the story is always the same: Report the huge number of incidents, then mention the slim minority that occur right next to an airport. It sure would be nice to see someone actually analyze this data to give people a better understanding of what might be driving this behavior, as I wouldn't be surprised if just asking pilots to follow the law might result in some unsubstantial quantity of these incidents going away. Of course the real problem with this is that it reveal that pilots are also aggressors, so it isn't in that industry's interests to pursue such ends.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Don't look at sun with remaining good eye. And sunlight isn't coherent light, so the comparison is skewed from the start. I recommend that you try looking into an eye-safe laser beam from a few hundred yards away (so the energy of the beam is spread over a spot two to three feet in diameter). The experience will not be dangerous, but nevertheless quite unpleasant, and this little experiment should cure the misconception that looking into a laser from afar couldn't be a problem.
Obviously the lack of temporal coherence in sunlight is irrelevant here. Spatial coherence does have some influence on how bright the source appears. Sunlight is fairly spatially coherent at about 4.7mrad divergence on Earth. That's comparable to a bad laser pointer, and not too much worse than a good one. Coherence is much less important to this issue than M^2 value or other measures of beam "quality" that correlate to focal spot size. The sun wins on those metrics. I've stared into many laser beams of different powers and wavelengths, sometimes intentionally, occasionally accidentally. I've been on the receiving end of high power beams from long distances just to see what it's like. A 150mW 532nm beam of about 1.5mrad (a decent quality DPSS module) is pretty darn bright from 3/4 mile away at night, but it's definitely not dangerous. Try it.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
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.
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
I know some really stupid people who might just say, "Yeah, worth it." I'm not friends with them but I know them.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Yup, it's usually a dull red or amber. It's also sometimes a very dim blue. I've seen the red and amber on Navel vessels at night. However, when driving, it's going to be hell on you when oncoming traffic fails to dim their headlights if you've acclimated to the interior brightness level.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I live really far from any airfields, and several times a year I have military cargo planes flying so low overhead the first several times I thought they were gonna crash. That is NOT an amusing experience by any means.
If a cargo plane is so low you can read the serial number (or whatever that unique letter-and-number code on planes is called) then it is TOO low.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
People post goatse links to blind pilots?! I guess that makes sense.
A fW^nudge is as good as a wink to a blind bat, eh? Eh?
(With apologies to Monty Python)
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
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.
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.