[MilCom] Laser Attacks on Military Aircraft

[Duane Mantick]

Well I think this was part of the point of his message
when he wrote "....incidents involving large lasers that
have hit aircraft at flight altitudes 8,500...." with the
key phrase here being "large lasers".

Indeed, the little stuff that you routinely buy over the
counter isn't likely to hurt much of anyone.  While they
are typically required to carry warning labels, retinal
damage (or anything else) will only occur with a direct
hit to the eye at fairly close range (my gut feeling on this
would be less than 100 feet) and quite possibly only with
prolonged exposure (e.g., more than a few seconds).

If you've ever played with a handheld, small laser, you know
how difficult it is to hold it still long enough to keep
"painting" a target.  Unless, that is, the target is the
proverbial "barn door" and you're fairly close.  You try and
put that little red spot on something at any appreciable
distance (relative to the target's size, of course) and HOLD
it there and it is quite difficult.  I've played with that
trying to "paint" the stop sign down the street, which is 
a couple hundred yards and have a hard time doing it.

Now, throw in a moving target.  Done that one, too, with a
small laser attached to an air rifle while plinking pests.
It can be incredibly frustrating - although if your laser is
well sighted in advance, once the pest holds still for a second
he is toast.  :-)

Let's flip the equation around.  Moderately powerful gas laser
tubes are NOT all that hard to come by through a lot of 
science surplus companies, and doubtless on the web.  With
most of these, all you need is the right power supply (usually
offered by the same company) and you can throw a fairly potent,
tight beam a considerable distance.  And, many of these are
decidedly NOT eye-safe.  But the larger the laser, the more
difficult it is to move around; which means that the "moving
target" issue is still there only compounded.

I only know one guy who, as an individual, ever made a setup
that allowed him to track moving objects successfully with a 
laser of any power.  He used the clock drive on a computer-controlled
telescope and programmed it to follow a known track (figured over
several weeks of observation to get consistent results).  When
he finally made an actual field trial of the thing, he caught
some backscatter (no harm done) which scared the living crap
out of him.  He dismantled the unit and terminated that entire
line of research.

I know a little about this topic because I am a lasertag player,
as well as equipment designer/builder (for my own use, not
commercial) and constantly have to defend the sport from people
who take the name of it literally and accuse us of being
dangerous.  "Lasertag" as a generic name for the sport does NOT
use real lasers; the generic name is actually a corruption of
"Lazer Tag", which was the trademarked name used by the now
defunct "Worlds of Wonder" INC for their equipment.  They were
the first commercially built stuff for individual use.  

Proper "lasertag" gear all uses Infrared LED's and NOT lasers.
Some indoor arena "lasertag" really does use low powered 
lasers - some tend to "mist" the playing area to make the beams
visible.  I have visited a couple of these sites, and was dismayed
to see that the players were NOT using any sort of eye protection.
Granted, at such low power levels used in such small indoor
arena games I think the chance of anyone being harmed is low.  But,
I don't want much to do with these guys due to the uncertainty.

The IR LED system is about like your TV remote on steroids; you
can look right at the thing and never see it, and even at high
power levels it is so harmless that OSHA et al don't even have a
category that comes close to covering it.

In spite of that, we still have to constantly defend our game 
against ignoramuses who mouth off without getting any facts,
claiming that "the lasers are dangerous".  And of course, those
who don't like "toy guns" of any sort.  I have found that you
don't NEED to build the thing into a "gun" shaped object at all;
you can put it in a square box and you still get idiots who 
complain about it for one silly reason or another.

Where do "real" lasers fit into that picture?  When you are
designing some stuff and trying to get a good optical alignment,
a low powered over-the-counter laser is a perfect tool.  I've done 
a fair bit of that, hence my experience with said lasers plus 
working with some other people who do the same thing.

But "attack" aircraft with them?  The small stuff is useless for
that.  To do any kind of damage at several thousand feet you'd have
to be playing with a pretty potent unit.

Duane


-----Original Message-----
From: milcom-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:milcom-bounces at mailman.qth.net]
On Behalf Of jeff
Sent: Friday, December 31, 2004 9:42 AM
To: Ken
Cc: milcom QTH list
Subject: Re: [MilCom] Laser Attacks on Military Aircraft

On Fri, 2004-12-31 at 09:09, Ken wrote:
> I'm sure many of you have seen in the news reports about recent laser 
> attacks on commercial aircraft.

wouldn't this require some serious hardware (beyond the keychain laser cat
toys)?



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