Posted on 01/04/2005 3:29:45 AM PST by Reader of news
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The FBI investigation into recent incidents involving laser beams aimed at aircraft has found no link to terrorism, the Department of Homeland Security's transportation security chief said Monday.
"There's not any evidence that these lasers are being used by terrorists," said Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary of border and transportation security. "The FBI certainly continues to investigate and look at these fact scenarios. It's also a safety issue that the Department of Transportation would certainly want to look at."
The FBI is investigating eight incidents since Christmas involving lasers -- or lights believed to be lasers -- directed at various aircraft across the nation, including incidents in the District of Columbia, Ohio, Colorado and New Jersey. All of the pilots were able to land without incident.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Above a Chinese ZM87 antipersonnel laser; weapons like this do not need to track the eye of a pilot.
The target area can be dozens or so of meters across @ several kilometers.
A cathode ray tube acts much the same way in that a handful of electron "guns" constantly repaint the screen many time per second.
Are you limiting it to kids and adults of Homo Sapien type, or are you including the young and mature of other species as well? You do appear to be excluding plants and minerals, or am I reading your statement too narrowly?
Yes.
They are made commercially and are available from most laser / optical supply companies. (e.g. Edmund Industrial Optics).
The principle is simple: they make a glass plate with a notch filter (band reject) tuned to the laser frequency. (Lasers have very narrow bandwidths). The laser goggles attenuate only the laser light; the rest of the spectrum is left untouched.
The only question is the type of laser being used. They have reported that they are "green", which could mean an Argon-Ion laser (a little large) or a solid state laser.
One of the lasers tracked the window of a moving jet for several continous seconds at 8600 feet. That is beyond motor driver telescope mount capability. Someone went to the trouble to make a computer guided image recognition system. There is no way in heck you could point a hand held laser at a moving jet and keep it in a cockpit. You might get lucky and flash the window a microsecond or two but that would be it. That is not what is happening, and that is why the FBI is on it in the first place.
Has the scare factor been mentioned? As a soldier, I can tell you it's no little jolt to look down a find a laser dot on your body. On the other hand, blinding/scaring the pilot is not the most dangerous possibility. Laser sights are widely known, laser targeting is less so. Ground-to-air and air-to-air missle targeting to be more specific. A cheap, simple over-the-counter laser pointer works. The missle is actually trained on the laser dot and will hit that spot. What most folks don't think about is that tracer rounds work both ways . . . so do lasers.
Yea, the fellow arrested in N.J..Seems to be a "Homer Simpson" event..
I understand completely -- I was making a point about the firearm reference.
It's probably just a college prank by a group of Islamic engineering students . . .
When I was a kid, I used to go down to the tracks and try to throw rocks through the doors into the empty boxcars, the trains were fast and sometimes if you missed they'd come back and hit you.
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