[Hunble]

While in the Army, my group pioneered the development of 1.54 micron eye-safe lasers. This wavelength is rather unique, since it can not penetrate the aquas-fluid inside the eyeball.

We developed a mega-watt 1.54 micron laser for probing the atmosphere, and I would personally demonstrate it's safety.

With a large group of officers standing around, I would fire the laser into a piece of black plastic. You could hear a large pop, and I would then show them the hole which was burned into the plastic.

I would then aim the laser directly into my eye and fire it...

Although they could hear the audible pop when the laser fired, nothing would happened to me!

Dog and pony shows like that are always fun. However, it was an important demonstration as to why 1.54 micron laser development was important for the safety of military personnel.

P.S. The laser could not penetrate the aquas-fluid inside of my eye and cause any damage, however, it would cause heat inside of the eye and give me a major head-ache! I never mentioned that little annoyance.

[babygene]

Interesting... What you are obviously aware of, though many on this forum don't seem to grasp is that it is extremely difficult to target anything 3 miles away without some sort of targeting system.

I have a laser sight on my handgun, and it's VERY default to even get the dot on the target 300 feet away. Imagine if the target were moving a couple of hundred miles per hour three miles away.

You may get lucky and get a flash of light in the cockpit window, but even if you had a powerfull laser, you would do no damage.