Lasers should be classed as offensive weapons – British pilots' union | Hacker News Reader

Lasers should be classed as offensive weapons – British pilots' union

bbc.co.uk

37 pointsascorbic65 comments

As a commercial pilot that has been hit a number of times by lasers, I find the report over the top. At the speed and distance the airplane is when hit (180 kts, 2000' high when 6 miles from the airport), you see they are trying to laser you, but is extremely difficult to fix the beam on you for more than some ms. At that distance the laser is quite wide too, and the cristal provides some protection. Also the beam comes from your side, and usually you don't look directly that way, so it's hard yo get a direct retine hit. I don't know what type of injury did the pilot suffer but all the cases that I know the laser was just anoying and a distraction. It must be prosecuted, but banning all lasers is stupid in my opinion.

I always wondered how lasers could be precisely aimed by hand at the distance a typical plane flies given it is a moving target.

It's the same math as circle-strafing, just reversed. Since the plane is moving relative to you, it's the plane's transverse velocity against your rotation rate and accuracy.

Basically it's 2 questions:

- Can you turn your wrist faster than the plane can fly?

- Can you hold your hand extremely steady?

At the typical distance and speed of a flying plane and size/angle of cockpit window and obstruction of nose, what is the arc-seconds of accuracy needed to target the window?

Because the laser has a very narrow beam, no, you can't hold it steady enough for a deliberate aim, but, you can end up wiggling it around enough over the targeted area, that one or more glints get in someone's eye, and a laser can harm an eye with an instant's exposure.

I love the fact* that it is theoretically possible to move the dot from a laser pointer faster than the speed of light, as it carries no information.

*Please correct me if I'm wrong. IANAP

So you're saying that the commercial pilot of Virgin Atlantic flight VS025 that called "pan pan pan" to request an urgent return to Heathrow was overreacting and that his co-pilot suffered no serious vision loss? Note that the laser strike was on takeoff and they didn't land until about 2 hours after departure, so the pilot's vision was still affected an hour into the flight.

I believe that is exactly what he is saying.

No, he maybe was hit badly, maybe was filling dizzy afterwards and they thought the laser was the reason. I don't know all the possible effects of a laser in a human eye, nor the power of this laser or the medical situation of the pilot prior to the encounter.

Also if one of the pilots finds himself unable to continue the flight, the other pilot has to declare pan pan, or even may day, as he is operating alone, it seems a bit dramatic but it's mandated that way.

What I know is that common laser incidents are annoying to pilots but usually harmless, and the pilot's association request to ban all lasers is over the top.

You still got to prosecute the dumb people playing to blind pilots anyway, not just for medical injuries, but because you are in a delicate parts of the flight and every distraction has potential consequences during landing and take-off.

Ludicrous authoritarianism masquerading as a solution to a problem.

Given that all laser pointers fall into a couple of very narrow bandwidths, surely it would be more practicable to filter these at the cockpit window. That way you solve the problem in every country where you fly your plane and also deal with the billions of laser diodes already in circulation that are essential most aspects of our modern existence. But that would cost air carriers directly, not the public, so I guess it's unacceptable to them.

I do not agree lasers are offensive weapons, but blocking out green light is pretty challenging, and these are the one of the most frustrating lasers for human vision.

With all due respect, what on earth are you talking about? The filtering idea is much more complicated than you'd think, and almost certainly won't work. Laser safety glasses are typically sold for specific wavelength sets. However, the block isn't all that precise - typically you just filter out the entire neighbourhood. Look at the Optical Density vs. Wavelength graphs on this page: https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id=76... . Now imagine trying to combine a whole bunch of those to cover all commonly available laser diode wavelength groups. Your laser-proof glass would be nearly opaque!

Even if we're extremely optimistic and have invented some new sort of very precise optical filter, you're still looking at dramatic reductions in visible light transmission which I would have to believe would be a huge safety implications.

True, but on the other hand this seems something useful to keep researching.

Build a windowless cockpit and feed the displays using an array of cameras with different filters on them composited back to full color.

[Airbus partners with Lamda Guard to evaluate an innovative laser strike protection](http://www.airbus.com/newsevents/news-events-single/detail/a...)

Which is very cool, but still very experimental and appears to only block a single frequency range (not what OP was proposing). I've also yet to see any published specs at all for the stuff (i.e. what's the actual optical density at those wavelengths?), so I'm a little skeptical still.

Filtering out lasers is probably not possible, but how about just detecting the source on the ground and automatically dispatching law enforcement. Or even use drone strike technology to quickly eliminate the threat.

Did you just suggest we send a hellfire missile after someone shining a laser pointer at a plane?

> Given that all laser pointers fall into a couple of very narrow bandwidths, surely it would be more practicable to filter these at the cockpit window.

Any changes you make to an aircraft are necessarily exponentially more expensive than equivalent changes in any other industry.

Since lasers are being shot from the ground it means that it will always hit the cockpit window at a high angle of incidence vs the normal to the glass surface. therefore wouldn't the vast majority be reflected anyway? unless the source of very far away, but that increases dispersion. does anyone have a video of what a laser strike look like from a cockpit?

The thread from the Pilots equivalent of HN is worth a read - http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/574720-virgin-atlantic-fl...

Thanks for the share, that was a very illuminating read (accidental pun).

As an aside, why do they all spell laser as "l@ser"? There's 3 instances of "laser", two are from the title repeated, and one is in the body. This means that that the common spelling is not banned or masked on that forum. Yet everyone else spells it with the @ sign, about 79 times, which is egregious.

http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/349414-l-ser-attacks-airc...

It's to avoid all the contextual ads on the site being for high-powered lasers, which some posters found irritating or offensive. I don't know why some posts seem exempt from the policy though. Mod posts maybe?

What a knee jerk reaction. I agree that people shouldn't be shining lasers at planes, but ban them outright? I think that really there just needs to more education, and perhaps make people register if they want to buy the powerful lasers, so there's some paper trail in an event like this.

Do you really think people who point lasers at a plane do so out of a lack of education?

Well, of course. I imagine it's done to see if they can see it reflect off the plane for amusement, not realizing that it could distract pilots and be potentially fatal.

I'm sorry, but I have to call shenanigans on that claim.

This is entirely speculation, but some of them might be doing it out of frustration of being kept awake by aircraft noise (noise from aircraft landing or taking off at LHR affects 250,000 - 750,000 people).

It's mostly kids and not-so-smart young adults.

I built a laser show system about ten years ago, and managed to give myself retinal burns with a fairly weak laser. So I'm aware of the dangers.

There are some incredibly powerful devices available now. IMO there's no reason - beyond macho posturing - that anyone needs a handheld laser pointer that puts out more than 50mW.

I wouldn't ban more powerful devices, but I'd certainly consider licensing them. A 1W handheld is an insane thing to be selling to someone with no training or oversight.

Bored idiot kids and young adults throw rocks at train windows, which has pretty obvious consequences. It's almost certainly those same morons who partake in plane-lasering, so I highly doubt education will help much.

Not only are laser pointers potentially dangerous to pilots in aircraft, they can, and do, cause retina damage - often between school kids playing around. They should be licensed, with heavy fines for carrying an unlicensed laser pointer and compulsory jail time for shining one at an aircraft.

Complete banning is somewhat ridiculous.

So, do you want to ban wireless presenters or laser rangefinders?

Requiring a license for these would be akin to banning them. Except if "holding a presentation" would be enough to get a license. In which case I think the limit would be useless. Maybe limiting them to adults might help. On the other hand, there are plenty of other ways for children to do stupid, permanently harmful things; and exactly the children that shouldn't be let near lasers would probably be able to find some anyway, so... I don't think the licensing idea would work.

And shining lasers at aircraft already carries a jail term.

And maybe the power limits could be made somewhat (much, actually) stricter.

They can be restricted based on power or class. A Class 2 laser pointer used for presentations or a laser rangefinder aren't going to be powerful enough to bother aircraft, nor in most cases to damage eyesight. Currently there is a voluntary code to not sell lasers over 1mW to the general public, but this isn't a legal requirement.

Sounds like a fun OpenCV type project to use a camera onboard in conjunction with the airplane's gps position,altitude, and camera's orientation to locate the source of the laser and prosecute accordingly.

Prosecution based on such information has been done frequently in the past. Basic geometry convicted a man near me about 6 years ago for shining a green laser pointer at a pilot taking off at a local air force base.

Don't shine lasers at pilots from your backyard.

So are bows, knives, clubs, and vehicles. Should they be banned, too?

I'm surprised you left out airliners... I think they were used in the most devastating terrorist attack in US history.

Once we start talking about banning rather than regulating, we've mostly lost the rational battle.

Yes.

I guess they should probably amputate all four of my limbs, seeing as how I have an amateur MMA record /s

Well knives are banned. And you need a license for vehicles. So a license for lasers?

> Well knives are banned

Well, you must be from the UK.

The article is from the UK, the ban call comes from the British Airline Pilots Association.

But HNers aren't. I was quite surprised seeing someone say matter-of-factly that knives are banned until I recalled this weird UK law.

> But HNers aren't.

So? The article's context is the UK.

> I was quite surprised seeing someone say matter-of-factly that knives are banned until I recalled this weird UK law

Welcome to being most of the world every day of the week?

> But HNers aren't

Well, you must be from the US.

Europe, actually, just like you :)

Oh, sorry then :)

> Well knives are banned.

I'm surprised. You can't own a kitchen knife? Or a hunting knife? Or pocket knife?

This is what I found.

https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives

It seems that you still can use one at home, but good luck trying to take a knife to a forest.

Also, no sales of switchblades and samurai swords :)

I find it really interesting that the blade lengths are given in inches ((3 inches or less") rather than 7 or 8 cm.

That law comes from the Criminal Justice Act 1988: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/33/section/139

Some legislation has been updated with metric measurements (example [1]), but not everything. This one is newer than metrication, but perhaps the length was based on something that existed before, like a police or sentencing guideline.

[1] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1979/21/schedule/1

Actually, you are allowed to carry a larger / fixed blade in the UK if you have a good reason to do so - for example, you are a butcher travelling to work premises, or you are e.g. going camping. Obviously, this is open to the interpretation of the police - and kind of falls into the category of 'don't do anything that would lead you to being searched' really..

No, not this tired, crappy, and not at all connected to the story argument. You do not contribute to anything by trotting it out.

Awesome but impractical idea: require every laser over a certain wattage to encode in very short pulses its own serial number. On first purchase and every resale, owners much register and transfer ownership.

Now, whenever such an incident happens, a bit of footage is all you'll need to prosecute the owner.

Shortcomings: cost of implementation, real or alleged theft, aftermarket modifications to mask the pulses, imported lasers, people who don't fear repercussions.

How is it possible that there are enough people buying powerful lasers and shining them at planes that they are hitting them often enough for this to be a problem? There must be either a lot of dumb people or a few very smart, vicious ones. Which is it? How did "Craig Ryan" do it?

Probably half a dozen people would be enough to cause all of the cases that are currently being reported. The chart in the article says there's been around 40 incidents at Heathrow in the first half of 2015. One person could cause all of those in 20 minutes.

I doubt that standard weak laser pointers could harm pilots much at such distances. However it makes sense to ban/regulate stronger laser pointers, since they don't have practical value for an ordinary consumer.

I bought a 1W ultraviolet laser pointer and thought it was cool, but disappointed with how dim it was. Then it destroyed the CCD in a digital camera after a brief exposure, and I threw that shit away because it dawned on me that it was 200x more powerful than my 5mw red laser, and 99%+ of the light was invisible and that I was playing with something extremely dangerous.

It should have been obvious from how quickly the batteries drained, or how much heat I could feel from the beam, or how bright that dot looked when I pointed it at something UV-reactive.

So is there no way to treat the windshield to deflect the laser light? If not then pushing towards fully autonomous landings and takeoffs is a better solution to trying to ban something you could never realistically ban. Either that or create detection systems if possible that can direct authorities

Treated windshields can block chosen wavelengths. But it's mutually exclusive, what blocks blue and green doesn't block red, etc. Unless you replace the glass with steel sheet and switch to camera optics.

These people need to grow the hell up, or wear protective glasses in the cockpit, whatever. Being able to target a plane, at all, and THEN also targeting the cockpit window is well beyond the capability of the vast majority of people. This is like asking that we ban spoons because somebody managed to actually cut another person's heart out with one.

Nanny State UK

This is a Pilots Association saying they should be banned, not the government banning them.

What a pointless comment. This is the pilot's union, who are obviously going to fight the corner of their members. Not the government.

Your comment is accurate, but you need supporting messages for it to be an actual argument.

The Times has an article about a nine year old boy, already blind in one eye, being given as laser pointer by his parents as a toy. The child damaged his working eye, and the parents felt comfortable enough in their own actions to speak to a national newspaper about it.

Edit: Times version is paywalled, but here's Daily Mail:

> Nine-year-old William Jackson was injured two years ago by one of three devices bought for him and his two brothers by their parents as a Christmas present.

> The schoolboy, who is now 12, already had a lazy right eye and wore an eye patch. The injury to his other eye left him unable to read.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3393159/Laser-pens-b...

Times paywall URL: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/National/ar...

When kids aren't able to take care of themselves, they need a nanny.

Based on the number of aircraft laser strikes every year (3700/year, not sure if that's US-only or world wide), lots of these laser owning kids can't take care of themselves.

I'm sure there are lots of responsible high-power laser owners that use them responsibly with proper protective gear and controls to ensure that no one else is exposed, but this is a case of a few bad actors spoiling the fun for everyone else.

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