WAR: FBI Charges Laser Suspect Under Patriot Act: Despite Acknowledging Not A Terrorist Act

Ok first of i suggested that idea earlier in the thread as well and i have to say that it was stupid because there is no such thing as ground to air laser guided missiles. only air to ground laser guided and the laser is the only thing on the ground.

They exist, but apparently are worthless for aircraft. Then what the hell is all this crap about? They don't even use lasers from the ground because it's too difficult to keep a laser on an aircraft! It must be even more difficult to shine one in a pilots eyes, then.

Another missile that fits into the anti-aircraft, ground launched category, is the man- portable launchers. This is typically a shoulder launched weapon that is either wire guided, infrared guided, or laser guided to its target. Against aircraft the laser guided is not used, as it is far too difficult to keep a laser trained on a gyrating aircraft as it speeds across the soldier's field of vision. However, the wire and infraded guided weapons are exteremly effective. The operator simply lines the incoming aircraft up in its sights, waits for the rocket launcher to signal it has a lock on, and then fires. In the wire guided system, the rocket streams out a fine set of guidance wires, which allows the operator to continue to home the rocket in onto its target.

www.milnet.com...



[edit on 6-1-2005 by Damned]

Night vision goggles don't amplifiy the light past a certain power, the batteries or power supply wouldn't be able to handle it.
If by some feat of technology they could amplifiy to infinity, lets get 30 night vision goggles and stack em all together and hold a pen light in one side and get a death ray out the other and power the world! I'm sure people with night vision goggles have gotten flashlights pointed at them and they have not gone blind.
They have automatic gain control in them and a limit of brightness, otherwise there would be alot of people in the service with burnt faces.

Giving hard punishments to first case offenders is like a pre-emptive strike on Iraq and sadam, sure it makes you feel good but it just brings out the people who want a reason to take you down. If it really worked like that, then maybe we better give people who go 5K/h over the speed limit a 5 year prison term and people who U-turn life! People still get parking tickets, and they still start wars, for these people, justice (even nazi like punishment) is not an issue anyway!
So why make any of this an issue when this has been going on since laser pointer were in science stores for $200 for 5mW red ones.

trust me night vision goggles when worn are capable of blinding you maybe not permanently but definatly long enough to cause a critical situation aboard the airplane. Any way the whole thing is however that they were not wearing nightvision and they were relying on natural focusing of their retinas and if you lose your night vision in a cockpit for even a minute you could be royally screwed. and somehow it strikes me as odd the use of traffic on the ground as an analogy because doing a u turn even in the middle of the highway and causing a giant pile up just doesn't have the same punch as dropping a jet out of the sky with a bunch of kerosene jet fuel into a populated area.

That's just it, a jet isn't going to drop out of the sky, even if the pilot did get blinded for a second. And there's absolutely no way in hell you could hit more than one eye at a time, much less blinding both a pilot and a co-pilot. The entire thing is ridiculous. I think I'll get my laser and go see if I can bring some jets down. I'll let you know if it works.

Its a very small point of light with and the ability fo the guy to hold it steady enuf to fry not just a retina, but both of two pilots seated apart from each other. The odds of that occuring are astronomical

I dug through some boxes and found my laser pointer. While I was playing around with it, I shined it directly in my eye for a sec. Quite frankly, looking at a 100W light bulb will leave a spot in your eyes a lot longer than the laser will. It didn't do anything that would inhibit driving or flying, and that was at point blank range. I'm not blind, nor even close. Go figure, eh?

the windsheild is mad to withstand birdstrike maiking approximatly 10 layers thick maybe more or less not sure. but anywho if the laser hits it on a variety of angles the laser will bounce of the inside of those layers and light up the whole windsheild. thus lighting up the entire cockpit and making the natural vision of the pilots useless if they are in the middle of banking or taking off then a minor miscalculation in trajectory can cause the plane to go into a stall and then voila you have 100's of dead below. Tell me whats the closest you guys have ever been to any plane except when you are travelling to another part of the country or world. I have been around planes my whole life and i know a lot of things about them. I am sticking to my guns on this one no matter what and im still trying to find this case in the canadian military where a pilot happened to be coming in for a landing and a helicopter flashed there lights in his face while wearing nightvision goggles. the guy lost his job because he was temporarily blinded and actually lost part of his vision i believe if you guys wanna search for it too go ahead i cant find it yet.

No, it won't. Play with a laser and any kind of glass sometime. If you don't have one, just go buy cheap one at any convenience store. I have double pain glass at home. If you shine a laser at any angle, some will go straight through, the rest will reflect. Regardless, it never changes directions, and it doesn't reflect at different angles just because there are more layers of glass. It's always a straight path. Go ahead and try it on your car windshield, which also has layers. Give it up. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary is going to happen. This is a bunk theory, period.

i admit i was wrong that was a theory and iis now proven wrong im gonna stop posting here as im sure im annoying people and i don't feel like argueing much as theorizing. the theories i gave basically might be all wrong but the facts are that if your flying an airplane and you do get blinded you may very well crash thats it thats all i will now stop wasting room on the board thank you and i do apologize for all the posts i put in here i do realize that could be considered being a troll sorry.

Well, that was my argument, basically. I've played with laser pointers extensively. I seriously doubt you can blind anyone in a plane with a class 3a laser pointer. Even if you were somehow lucky enough to aim the laser into the cockpit and into a pilot's eye for even a second, you're still only going to be able to hit one eye. The chances that you'd be lucky enough to hit his/her other eye (much less a co-pilot too) are practically astronomical. This is pseudo-anti-terrorism, if I ever saw it.

A few things.
Lasers will refract if they travel through thick glass, but I think it just changes their angle and you get a straight beam.

New green lasers are supposed to give you a range of 25,000 feet so you can point out birds (poor birds) or make spots in the sky to highlight stars.

Now I don't know what you can see at 25,000 feet, but I know I can't see a little red laser pointer dot. These new ones must be designed to disperse to show a big dot so humans using them can see them.

I saw the article and originally thought the same thing. Little red lazer pointers, no way! It explains some about the green ones.

You'd have to be in line with the runway and catch them taxiing for takeoff which could be enough to cause the plane to veer into runway equipment as it did in Taipei just three years ago. It would be a long shot. The co-pilot might not realize the pilot had lost control until it was too late. The person with the laser would definitely get caught, and it would be easy enough to impliment security to make it impossible.

There is no doubt this story has been hyped. It shouldn't warrant national attention let alone inspire a public panic.