lLaser Beams Aimed Into Cockpits
This isn’t the first reports I’ve heard of laser being aimed at commercial aircraft cockpits but it’s among the more disturbing. Some of the early reports I caught onto over a year ago were take off or landings, close to the ground anyway. But at least one of the reported incidents in the linked article was at 8500 feet.
That’s not laser pointer range. Even a good laser pointer such anyone can pickup almost anywhere simply doesn’t have the right technology to reach that distance. Even a standard rifle or pistol type weopon site laser like we’ve all seen in the movies aren’t much more powerful than that typical laser pointer and are largely made from the same type of laser diodes though typically a different wavelength than the pointers. Still their diode based rather than the larger, more powerful gas tube type lasers so the dispersion rate is very high. The light dispersion of a standard laser diode would be so high that it might as well be a flashlight at 100 yards.
But high end stuff like military range finding and targeting hardware would have the type of power to reach out 8000 feet with little problem.