[babygene]

" You're thinking CW, a Q-switched laser would do the job in nanoseconds."

How are you going to aim this thing? You have two choices:

1. You can diverge the beam, but the power goes down with the square of the area... This would require a huge laser.

2. You may be able to accidentally hit the target. The odds are overwelmingly against this.

If a terrorist really wanted to take down a plane, a laser is not the right weapon. There are much simpler beam gadgets available with much more power.

[AdamSelene235]

How are you going to aim this thing? You have two choices: 1. You can diverge the beam, but the power goes down with the square of the area... This would require a huge laser. 2. You may be able to accidentally hit the target. The odds are overwelmingly against this.

The guy was on approach. Conceivably you could co-align a rifle scope with the collimated beam and do the job with a single shot. Primitive uncooled YAG could be run at 1 Hz. Add a chiller and hundreds of pulses a second are feasible.

Several common CW visible lasers would also do the job