USAF says China injured a Pilot with lasers

originally posted by: LtFluffyCakes96
anything unidentifiable though is fair game

If you go shining a laser at anything in the sky, regardless of whether or not you can identify it, you're an idiot.

a reply to: SR1TX

Yes, yes, because some anonymous person that has already made outrageous claims on the Internet saying it's BS is the Gold Standard of debunking and we should all fall down in agreement.

a reply to: LtFluffyCakes96

Depending on where you are, shine it at a plane, and get caught, and you'll go to jail.

a reply to: Arnie123

People are the same everywhere. Give them a laser and a plane going over, and they'll point it at it. It may be a provocation, it may be someone playing around.

Maybe.... they are Chinese UFO hunters with laser pointers! :O


nah...

a reply to: Zaphod58

Recently (~ a year ago) a 22 year old punk was targeting a police helicopter that was videotaping the crimes of his autonom-left buddies on a street. They were destroying property and setting mailboxes on fire. He used a green laser pointer to target the pilot.

Just imagine if the pilot lost control and they´d crash into a street full of houses. Apparently the judge thought the same, the 22 year old got 1 year and 8 months jailtime.

Police are now demanding laserpointers to be declared as a weapon. The fun part is, you are already not legally allowed to operate laser classes other than class 1 and class 2M. Those are all smaller 1mW.

Those handheld green ones you get however settle in the region of 1-2W.

a reply to: verschickter

In the SF Bay Area we used to deal with it from time to time. Some fool in the South Bay liked to lase our chopper often when we were inbound with a patient. We would have to alter course to protect the pilot first and foremost.

This fool because he was so far off had a hard time holding it on moving targets and tended to splay the beam around. The Chicoms are using weapons grade with a targeting system would make it more effective.

a reply to: verschickter

At least one pilot that was hit didn't recover any kind of sight in one eye for several days. And they weren't certain he'd ever fly again. It's gotten bad enough that there's a company that is developing windscreens that can block specific frequencies of laser to protect the pilots. There was even talk at one point of having one pilot either wearing protective glasses, or doing nothing but look down at the instruments until landing.

a reply to: FredT

You should have devices that are able to track down those idiots. Our police helicopters -thuss I don´t know how they do it exactly- can pinpoint them down very fast.

There was another case where two youngsters did the same from their bedroom window. They resolved the adress and send a car right to the house on the fly so to speak and went on with their mission.

I don´t know how much of this is exagerated but I can imagine them using the video-system that has FLIR and GPS tagging. They basically can resolve the GPS coordinates where their "crosshair" hit´s the ground. I think that´s what they probably did.

Thinking about that, you only need the choppers location, orientation of the pod relative to the chopper itself or directly via compass, a laser distance meter and the height above ground. I bet that´s how it´s done! If not, damn I need to develop that

a reply to: Zaphod58
I´m speculating now but for that to work (the windscreen filter) they would need to filter out a very narrow frequency band for each type of laser (green, blue) because of the starboard lights, would be bad if they filter those.

I don´t think most people know how dangerous it is what they are doing. Just apes with a shiney toy.

a reply to: verschickter

Right now, they're mostly worried about the green. That seems to cause more damage than the others. The screen they're developing is geared towards the frequency range used by the laser. It's pretty interesting and they're actually getting it to work better than they hoped. Still nowhere near ready to use, but getting there.

Few years ago out near the Army Aviation training base at Oakey,Qld Australia some idiot farmer was Laser pointing a Blackhawk engaged in NOE training near his farm at night.Guy got his butt severely thrown in jail..

a reply to: Zaphod58

How about UV-lasers they are really bad for your eyes. I once adjusted the lasertable at work and it was still powered on at 1/4th dial. I was dusting off the surfaces with pressurized air when the dust cap was blown off. It must have reflected from my watch( that I did not took off until then, because I was still preparing) or the metalic nozzle from the air pistol.

Then a bright flash occured. Think of a perfect plain tannish green with a slight mix of violet-blue in it flashing in your left eye and you see nothing for a minute. No pain, just that tannish green hue. I nearly freaked out but it went better a couple of minutes later. Did not turn into a super hero though.

a reply to: verschickter

One step at a time. Right now, green lasers are the big issue. Eventually they'll come up with a screen that deals with lasers in general.

a reply to: Zaphod58
Idea:

Develop a transparent coating that either absorbs or reflects the beam at the point on the screen where it hits with a significant higher density than the surrounding area.

Easier said than done...

a reply to: verschickter

I'm all for dropping laser guided SDBs that use their laser to home.

Something tells me the countermeasures will be a lot less public than the complaints.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Too bad(or thank god!!) those green lasers are not powerfull enough to do some LIPCing.