Aussie laser-pointer dazzle attacks on airliners: Bad

It's amazing

That the public might prefer lethal force to non-lethal...

@AC

The story says that these things have been reported, so someone must have reported them. I'd assume, therefore, that it's the airlines and pilots who are having the issues otherwise who'd know that some retarded fuckwit on the ground is doing this? Flight landings *have* been aborted as a result of it.

Therefore, it *must* be possible.

Policing it, however... nightmare. When you consider there must be thousands of the things out there already.

How unlucky can you get?

This sounds to me like the sort of thing you see in hollywood movies. One group of people armed to the teeth with high-powered automatic weapons up against the "good guy" with a hand-gun. During a pause in the action where the baddies have shot off hundreds of rounds - all to no avail, our hero rolls out from behind cover and while moving fires off three or four rounds. Each one hits a different target and instantly kills him, while the star ('cos it's always the star) brushes off the dirt and walks away without a scratch on him. We accept the absurdity of the scene because we know it's fiction - no-one beleives it could actually happen like that.

Now, let's think about dazzling an airline pilot with a hand-held laser. First of all, the plane is travelling at a couple of hundred MPH, descending or ascending (if it's not near an airport it'd be too small to "hit") and subject to, hopefully only, small amounts of turbulence: bumping the plane in all three dimensions at once. Into that you have someone at least a mile away with a hand held device that he or she is apparently able to aim accurately enough to hit the pilot's pupil - which would be at best 7mm across, even at night. (Though at night you couldn't even see the cockpit window, even if you could make out where the front of the plane was.)

Now I don't doubt the pilots do, occasioanlly, get a stray reflection - given all the lights we surround ourselves with. There may even be a microsecond here or there where some fool with a laser does manage to randomly wave it across a plane's window. (Hint: how many passengers have witnessed this? Considering there are hundreds of passengers sitting by windows and only a couple of pilots, you'd expect some sort of corroberation - let's hear it). But to say there are pilots out there who have actually been dazzled by a concerted effort from malevolent individuals? Bruce Willis would be proud of their aim.

@Pete, not to be picky but...

Over a distance of a mile, a laser would lose some of its coherency and its focal point (not sure of the technical word) would expand. I see it with laser sights all the time, the dot which is 5mm across at 20m is gets much larger the further away you are aiming it. It's focussed at a certain distance from the projector don't forget. Therefore it's going to cover quite an area at that distance and so not need the same kind of precision aiming.

Not only that, passengers wouldn't see it - they sit at the SIDE of an aircraft, looking out SIDE windows - the pilots sit in the FRONT and look out the FRONT windows...

There was a phase not that long ago of people doing it to trains and buses (buses are not obviously quite as fast...) and I've SEEN it with my own eyes being done to a bus driver.

Final point - approach speed is normally around 150-160mph.

@David Cornes

I think the beam dispersion on all but the most expensive lasers is bad enough that it's possible. Bear in mind also that you don't have to 'stay on target' - just flashing someone's eyes off and on briefly (e.g. by 'panning' the pointer) could do the trick.

Anyway, clearly an excellent idea to ban them. Much easier than trying to catch the twits responsible (who have them already). Ohh... wait...

Cobblers!

We've been here a while back, and someone in the comments section then used the word "Bollocks" in the title. Too true.

I don't care how strong the laser is, there is no way anyone is going to target a window at the distance required. Go on, do it with your 10-15mw on a window a mile away. No, tell you what, make it 100 meters.

A lucky swipe I hear you say?

So what!

At the distance we are talking about a laser on any glass that is slightly curved is going to do, eh, bugger all.

As for a whole bunch of pilots reporting it. I am sure a whole bunch of others have reported black helicopters etc.

Rubbish!

Paris. I bet she is reporting an incident right now!

Re: How unlucky can you get?

Couple of points. The passengers are not facing windows and the windows they have are a tad smaller than the ones INFRONT of thye pilots.

Secondly, I have a 100mw green laser and I and very careful with it. However a few times I have managed to get a partial reflection reflected back into my own eye. Unlike the red lasers your eye doesn't have enough time to react to these green lasers and the effect can be quite a large chunk of forward sight missing for up to 10 minutes from this very small relection. Can you imaginge trying to land a plane like this?

Re: How unlucky can you get?

"Hint: how many passengers have witnessed this? Considering there are hundreds of passengers sitting by windows and only a couple of pilots, you'd expect some sort of corroberation - let's hear it)"

No you wouldn't. All your suppositions are based on a side view scenario which is highly unlikely. Now stand yourself in front of the aircraft on it's glide path coming in to land and your couple of hundred mph reduces to virtually nil. As for the 7mm target, the refraction from the windshield, which is a larger area, will be more than enough to distract a pilot, possibly enough to prevent them seeing outside.

If only all these idiots who try this were like you.

Re: For real

I don't know whether this is real or not but, if the idiots are near the end of the runway then as the plane is on the glide slope the relative motion to the laser is reduced, plus if they are using a high power laser you'd only need to tag the pilot for a split second to cause problems.

@Pete

The beam spreads quite wide in the atmosphere (air molecules, dust and the like). There is a proper formula to describe how much, but I remember a Tomorrow's World a few years back where a laser shone at the BT Tower in London from a building a half-mile or so away had a diameter of over a metre.

Clearly this is bigger than the pilot's pupil and you'd only have to hit the nose of the plane to be sure of flooding the cockpit with dazzlingly bright, coherent light.

Speed of light

Several references have been made regarding the difficulty of hitting a plane moving at several hundred mph. Aircraft speed is irrelevant. It's not as if you have to try to calculate the lead time necessary because of the length of time it takes the projectile - in this case light- to reach the target.

As to distance - I don't know about the situation there but where I am aircraft frequently make long low approaches. It's not as if they are little dots in the sky one minute and directly off the end of the runway the next.

A friend lives in an area where landing aircraft regularly bring conversations to a halt. You can practically count the rivets on the things.

This is an entirely plausible concern.

@steogede

So how many times have accidents been proven to have resulted from speed camera flashes? Stop whining and do the speed limit.

I'm going to apply the laser defence mentality

So when we've had reports about the US' laser defence weapons shooting down mortar rounds, shells and rockets the uneducated came up with this brilliant idea of "OMG JUST STICK MIRRORS ON THE ROUNDS TO REFLECT THE LASERS AWAY"

So here's my idea-

Just stick mirrors on the planes and replace the cockpit window with a mirror reflecting outwards!

Oh wait...

There are lasors specifically designed to get pilots attention in this way

All those of you who are saying targeting a pilot in this way is impossible should perhaps take a look at http://www.sea-me.co.uk/laser_flare.htm . The products produce a line rather than a spot and can easily cross a pilots line of sight - I've legitimately used one in this way.

Ban laser pointers

As 10:32 says, what's wrong with pointy sticks? Ooh, I know, you can beat people over the head with them or sharpen them at one end and stick them in people. Ban those too so people have to use their fingers. Wait, those can be curled into a ball and used to hit people, get rid of them. People can always jerk their heads in the direction of the diagram... or into people's faces... shit, I'm a walking bag of criminality, wait while I fetch my hacksaw and perform some surgery on myself.

Distracting pilots with a laser pointer is already illegal, so... why not use the existing laws and actually try to catch the people doing it? It's funny how people think Minority Report is some kind of dystopic nightmare society when banning something because it *might* lead to someone committing a genuine crime is no different from predicting someone committing a crime and arresting them before they do it. In fact, much worse, since less than 1% of laser pointer owners or illegal drug users actually go out and commit theft, rape or assault, whereas the bald triplets in the swimming pool were 100% accurate if I remember correctly. (Did Tom Cruise actually shoot the guy in the end? If he didn't it's still >99% accuracy.)

To actually answer the question, some screens are very large and if you're in a large auditorium with an audience looking down at you from different angles, you might as well indicate with your finger..

@Pete - Pete replies

OK team, I've read the responses - not convinced. Here's why.

As was pointed out, laser beams spread. It's only a few milli-radians but the wider the beam, the lower the brilliance and the less dazzling effect. The further away the wider the beam and the lower the light intensity again. Inverse square - the effect falls off rapidly.

Next, passengers not seeing the effect: The size of the window is irrelevant. Provided you are close enough - e.g. in the window seat your field of view is as good as a forward-looking pilot's. There should be some reports from passengers

Third, to actually illuminate a pilot, as has been pointed out you have to be virtually on the flight path. Someone under the aircraft or to the side can't see the pilot and (more to the point) the pilot can't see them, even out of the corner of their eyes WW2 spotlights? They illuminated the side/bottom of the planse. Even when caught in the spotlights, virtually NONE were hit by AAA. It was more a morale thing than a defence thing.

Almost last. Sorry to be the bringer of bad news, but the power of lasers sold inthe shops is more a work of fiction than fact. The ones advertised at 20mW, 50mW 100mW etc. are generally nowhere near that - it's only advertising. Yes a few can pop a balloon, but move the balloon a mile away and you won't even light it, let alone burst it. One thing that people don't realise is that the power of these pointers falls off as the batteries get low and as the laser ages.

Nearly there.... I still don't buy the ability of a person to hand-aim a laser onto a moving target over a mile away for any significant time. It's simply not possible and I defy anyone to prove otherwise. As a benchmark, the moon subtends an angle of 0.5 degree - you can't hand-aim a laser at that for any time, let alone the front of a plane - let alone the pilot's window - let alone the pilot's eye - even for a millisecond, even if they weren't moving.

Finally (phew) any terrorist worth their salt would use an IR laser - that leaves no visual trace and can therefore be placed at any location with impunity. In case you're wondering, a green laser is in reality an IR laser diode with a frequency doubler (or trebler) integrated.

ILS?

Don't pilots land using ILS? What are they looking out of the window for?

Still ridiculous to be pointing lasers at people intentionally mind. Although to be honest the only thing that really surprises me about this story is the fact it happened in Aus first and not Blighty. I can only surmise that our brand of tossers are slower on the uptake and didn't think of it first.

@Cobblers

It's quite easy at night to illuminate a target the size of an aircraft at a range of a couple of miles. I remember many years ago when laser pointers were much bigger and much newer, we were up on a hill one night and could see the light on the local church spire at that sort of distance. It is a concern to pilots, so even if your little 1mW job won't do it, there are plenty of higher power ones that can.

Dazzling lights...

My driveway has a short steep uphill section that results in my headlines being aimed up into a part of the sky where airplanes on approach may sometimes be found. In short, my fairly bright headlights sometimes are aimed directly into the cockpit of approaching airliners that aren't much more than a kilometer away. Not much I can do about it.

One question: on a day with too many lasers on approach, why not simply switch to IFR procedures (stop looking out the window) while the police attempt to track down the culprits? This assumes that the culprits are not able to get in a position to dazzle the pilots in the final moments just before touch-down.

@ a relatively cheap solution

I seem to remember that aircraft have green landing gear down indicators, and that three greens means that the landing gear is down and locked.

But nice try.

Why do we need these lasers anyway, surly you only need one that goes 25m. Mind you they are cheap enough for kids to buy, and it's probably kids doing it. Just think of the kudos you could get by showing little Johnny that you can tag a jumbo. My what fun!

Re: Angle of approach

"When a plane lands, It has it's nose up"

Which has sod all to do with the angle of approach. In a simplified world during the approach the pitch of the plane (which is what I think you mean) is used to control altitude and keep it on the glideslope, it can be positive or negative. The extreme nose up is just for touchdown.

Stupidity

There has been frequent mention of the difficulty of aiming a 'hand-held' laser. Well, I have a camera intended to be used as a hand-held device. I guess it must be impossible for anyone to use it with a long lens (which magnifies the effect of an unsteady hand) because obviously no one would ever think of attaching it to a tripod to hold it steady.

And it is so difficult to use a telescope to find a particular star because no one has thought to invent a spotting scope. Oh, wait a minute...

Obviously no one would think of applying these methods to the problem under discussion... thank god all the malicious folks in the world are stupid.

Hmm... I guess I have to assume all these reports of security problems on the internet are bogus because they would require a level of intelligence that many writers seem to think is beyond the capability of malicious people!

Assuming that moral stupidity is a certain indication of general stupidity is... stupidity. Underestimating the intelligence of your opponent is always a stupid move.

Oh, FFS....

To all the gizmoids on here spouting crap on a variation of "it can't happen / it never happened"

Please read this sentence from the original article slowly, you can move your lips if you like;

"SIX PASSENGER FLIGHTS WERE AFFECTED, WITH AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS HAVING TO RE-ROUTE THE PLANES"

Now go away and write what you are on your forehead, with a marker pen.

No, don't use a mirror, it will come out as "tnuc a ma I".