Posted on 09/28/2004 8:12:49 PM PDT by ableChair
Greta Van Susteren reported that a Delta pilot enroute to Salt Lake City was lazed in the cockpit this last Wednesday. Only country I know that has that hardware (for lazing bomber pilots) was the Soviet Union. Pilot reportedly required medical treatment and this was not a minor injury (weak laser) wound. More will come out to tomorrow as this story hits the print press.
Bunny? Pancake? I thought lazing was what I did in the recliner.....
http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/ccw/info.htm
Anti-personnel Laser Weapons
Anti-personnel laser weapons are inexpensive, sold openly by the Third World, have line-of-sight aiming, and are capable of producing catastrophic results if used against aircrews and sensors in flight (especially during takeoffs and landings). Commercially available laser weapons include the ZM-87, developed by the Chinese and first displayed at the International Defense Exhibition in 1995. In addition, the Russians sell a truck-mounted high-energy laser. And the University of Tasmania in Hobart sells a CO2 laser system for controlling forest undergrowth. The system is used to ignite logging debris from distances of 100 to 1,500 meters. The laser, costing $86,500, is mounted on a gun turret carried in a 2-ton truck and is simple to operate. Similar systems are available commercially throughout the world.
Data from the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System database for the last two years provide examples of commercial flights in which the pilots suffered eye damage from lasers. These include aircraft landings at Honolulu, Las Vegas, Miami, New York, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. In Phoenix, one crew member was flashblinded, with resulting after-images and loss of night vision for about 1½ hours. Takeoffs have also been affected: in a 737 outbound from Los Angeles, two pilots were struck by a blinding flash that lasted 5 to 10 seconds. The first officer had burns on the outer eye and broken blood vessels. In a flight from Cleveland, one crew member received a bright blue light in his right eye and experienced vision impairment for the next 1½ hours. Data from the National Air Intelligence Center indicate that, in the U.S. alone, commercial lasers have caused over 50 blinding incidents. Lasers have also injured a number of Air Force personnel. For example, the Palace Casino’s laser show laser-illuminated a C-130 landing at Keesler AFB. The flight engineer, who was looking straight ahead, was blinded for 3 to 5 seconds and then experienced blurred vision. The next day, he experienced eye pain requiring eye drops. In April of this year, two Royal Canadian Air Force helicopter pilots were laser-illuminated from a Russian trawler during a routine mission.
Close, super bright spotlight.
I heard the same report. I think they said the injury was to the pilot's eyes. They did say the plane landed safely at SLT but did not mention where it came from.
WHOA!
I would assume it would have to come from satellite or a higher aircraft???
Getting flakey out there, folks!
aaahhh, thanks...I feel better now.
Beeber shiels up
Thankee kindly for the explanation.
Thanks for the report, this doesn't sound good. geeeze.........
Prairie
Don't you like acronyms that are made into nouns that are made into verbs?
Nope. Easily done from the ground.
Bloody hell! What now?
I just heard this on Greta's show when she was talking to Bill Gertz. Bill said that the pilot had to be treated for eye injuries. If planes can get knocked out of the sky by ground-based lasers, there's a big, big problem.
Actually it was Bill Gertz, who said it on Greta's show.
Some telescopes (including untold numbers of amateur scopes) have lasers mounted on them. The laser spot can be used either for alignment or for tracking atmospheric aberrations in order to correct them with adaptive optics. Some lasers systems are also used commercially for sky-writing.
This should clear it up per dictionary.com:
v. lazed, laz·ing, laz·es
v. intr.
To be lazy; loaf: laze around the house.
v. tr.
To spend (time) loafing: lazed the afternoon away in a hammock.
That's what's scary. It almost had to come from another aerospace craft (including conventional aircraft). My guess is that it was a single engine plane, but we'll see.
The most publicized alledged incident of lasing occured in 1997. The officer involved subsequently lost a law suit over the incident.
So would you have to be IN the cockpit to do this, or would this be done from a distance? Say, a satellite or another aircraft?
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