Helicopter/airplane laser protection idea?

[Branson33]

Hey you wonderful laser people of the world, I was sitting in my bed wondering why helicopters and airplanes don’t use a type of coating on the glass windows like laser goggles to maybe reduce the effects of the laser light scattering? Maybe not like full fledged laser coatings like eagle pair goggles but a lighter coating where they can still see everything fine. This might be a dumb question but I figured I might as well ask

 

[Encap]

Pretty much for the same reason they don't eliminate widows. Why don't "they"? LOL

Reality is that it has proved challenging to engineer eyewear or thin films for aviators that block laser light while still allowing enough other light through—including the lights used to mark runways, obstacles, and cockpit instruments at night.Google the subject ---there is a lot of ongoing research and development in many more ways than you can imagine.

See: http://www.laserpointersafety.com/windscreen.html

 

[Benm]

Also it isn't really that feasible anymore. We used to have the 532 nm dpss lasers mainly, and you could treat the windows to reflect that exact wavelength, though only at a certain angle.

You cannot protect against things like 630-660 nm ranges though, that would make it impossible for the pilot to see any red lights, and those are used a lot in aviation - from anti-collision beacons, papi lights runway or taxiway markers.

With the range of laser wavelengths available nowadays it would not even be feasible to design the windows to block them, you might as well replace the windows with metal plates at that point. Also, you could install some system that blacks out the windows at the control of a button, but i don't think any pilot would really want to use that.

Airliners can land with near-zero visibility on airports that have the latest ILS equipment installed, but noone likes to do that. If an airliner gets into a situation where there is no way to see the runway before touching it, it'd most likely divert to an airport nearby with better weather conditions. Completely blind landings are possible and can be done with the latest ILS in place, but practically only used when the aircraft must land immediately due to fuel starvation or something like that.

 

[hakzaw1]

At the LSO class we were told how to do the most possible harm that can be achieved regards to lasing aircraft BUT were also told to keep that info to ourselves. Of all the possible times ..Landing & then the take-off are the worst ones for our pilots... (fixed wing).

Helicopters are the ones which make finding the 'bad guys' the easiest.

for more info go to laserpointersafety.org lots of interesting 'reads' there.

 

[paul1598419]

Really, as Benm had already stated, there are too many wavelengths available to us now that blocking all of them would be impossible. I have several gaps in my collection, but just trying to block the wavelengths I do have would be impossible. I'm grateful that I have huge conifers around me to use as a beam stop when lasing outdoors.

 

[Branson33]

Alright thank you guys for the information. I didn’t seem to think it all the way through that they wouldn’t see the red light and any colored light in general haha silly mistake. Maybe one day they will create something that will make pilots more safe, and better yet not get lasers banned

 

[paul1598419]

I don't see lasers ever being banned in the USA because they are used too much in research and in technology. I believe the lobby for professionals using lasers would make banning them outright a nonissue. Too bad we couldn't get states and the feds from overreacting to opioid related deaths and making it more difficult for people who really need them for severe pain relief from getting them at the doses they have been taking for years. But, hardly anyone ever complains about making drugs harder or impossible to get.

 

[RedCowboy]

China is making black market fentanyl and packaging it to look like common RX meds, then when someone OD's all anyone knows is they were taking RX and the truth is slow to emerge. Fact is over half the OD's are illegal drugs not the RX

If someone only knows what they hear on the TV and they don't have a loved one living with chronic pain then they likely won't understand, any small risk is far outweighed by quality of life, nobody in the USA should have to suffer in pain for the lack of a few pills, it's comparable to torture for some people and it's just flat wrong.

 

[paul1598419]

There are several derivatives of fentanyl that have been popular in the black market for many years. Several are even more potent that fentanyl on a per ug basis. It is often used as a cut for diacetyl morphine or just in place of it. That's a problem because it takes so very little of these drugs to OD on that it is an accident waiting to happen. I do remember fentanyl being called China White as a replacement for heroin as far back as 1972. Unfortunately, it is what it is and there is nothing I or anyone else can do about it. It should be apparent to anyone who has watched this for as long as I have that interdiction doesn't work. It actually destroys more lives and never puts a dent in the illegal trade. But, politicians will say we have to keep trying, as if doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is not the definition of insanity.

 

[Cyparagon]

Pilots rely heavily on the color of signal lights to guide them. To block out even a single color from the view of the cockpit would be crippling at best, and suicidal at worst.

 

[Benm]

At the LSO class we were told how to do the most possible harm that can be achieved regards to lasing aircraft BUT were also told to keep that info to ourselves. Of all the possible times ..Landing & then the take-off are the worst ones for our pilots... (fixed wing).

Helicopters are the ones which make finding the 'bad guys' the easiest.

I think it would be common knowledge that takeoff and landing are the most dangerous parts of a flight.

This doesn't really have much to do with lasers fundamentally, if you have enough altitude you can always trade that for speed even if the engine(s) stop working entirely, regardless of cause. It rarely happens, but if an airliner would lose all propulsion at high altitude there is is a fairly large range to find a suitable runway whenever near land (given a glidescope of 12 and flight level of 350 that'd be over 100 km to glide).

But more important to note: No laser has ever been the cause of an airliner crashing.

Pilots may reject a takeoff or landing if they fear being hit by a laser at their discretion, divert to an alternate when they feel landing is unsafe due to people with lasers at the destination airport and all that. Afaik even that has never happened before, despite reporting beying annoyed by laser pointers pilots apparently felt the danger was not large enough to go for an alternate.