Laser Warnings Planned for Out-of-Bounds Pilots

akadruid writes "No, it's not a new 'Star Wars' system: The US Pentagon and NORAD are using lasers to warn off pilots flying into restricted airspace, according to Wired magazine. I wonder if they got the idea from the FBI, who charged a New Jersey man under anti-terror laws for doing this?" The system is not yet in operation (but could be as soon as next month), and according to NORAD, their system has been found safe for pilots' eyes.

Why note encode data in the signal

[theDunedan]

By that I mean, why just flash red-red-green. They could also indicate the best direction to turn to get out of the airspace as quickly as possible:

Red-red-green means turn right. Red-green means turn left. Red-red means stay straight. Green-green (for a few seconds) means you are now clear of the airspace.

the Dunedan

restricted zones w/ auto-pilot

[krunk4ever]

pretty soon when an airplane gets close to a restricted zone, it'll slowly navigate away from it. the closer you get to the zone, the more it turns away, so by the time you're about to hit the zone, you're flying alongside it or away from it. and this auto-pilot system will be mandatory to all commercial jets.

restricted airspace enforced by photon torpedo

[Leontes]

This to me sounds like an invisible fence for pilots, which isn't such a bad idea. This to me sounds like a novel way of dealing with malfunctions when other forms of communication are not available. I worry, though, that this kind of technology might be overused though, like let's have lasers advertisements or laser boundaries marking points of interest outside of a plane for passengers. I guess I wonder since visual distractions will only increase, whether this is just a stop gap measure into they can come up with a less potentially temporarily solution. There is so much light stimulus out there anyway, I wonder if there isn't another, less potentially universal way of creating a modern day lighthouse. Like a directed sonic screeching noise that would reverberate in the cockpit, a bit like those grooves on the side of the road when you are nodding off on a turnpike.

Wouldn't....

[deian]

it make more sense to actually send a message to the pilots? I don't think that having a red/green laser beamed at them would be very smart(what would prevent a prankster from doing it?) and i don't think that as a pilot having a laster beamed at you is the most comfortable thing - panic?
and is it just a coincidence that they come up with this idea after they lockup a guy for beaming a laser at a plane?

In related news ...

[ssand]

The FBI have charged NORAD under anti-terror laws for pointing lasers at aircrafts.

Re:restricted airspace enforced by photon torpedo

[the pickle]

If the FAA mandated GPS units in every aircraft, that would provide a simple fix.

Unfortunately, mandating a GPS in every aircraft authorised to operate in US airspace is prohibitively expensive and damn near impossible to enforce.

The lasers seem like a reasonable stopgap measure until something better can be figured out, but the real fix for pilots violating prohibited airspace is not to have so much damn prohibited airspace.

p

Many Laser Sightings Last Year Were Govt Tests

[Ron Bennett]

I'm surprised no one mentioned it here yet ...

Many of the laser sightings last year appear to have been part of U.S. government tests of the system...

And anyone who doubts that, just search news archives of late last year - the U.S. govt publically acknowledged doing tests around the same time/areas of the "mysterious" laser sightings.

Ron Bennett

Low-info article, and puny low-power lasers.

[Shag]

It just says that the light wouldn't be as intense as in the cases where people have gotten in trouble with their laser pointers.

That seems a little hard to believe at first, since a green laser pointer's power is only something in the milliwatts, and the AOPA article [aopa.org] mentioned in another reply (this is a fixed URL, incidentally) talks about a 1.5 watt laser. But that's reflected/diffused to create a 100-foot-wide line of light in a circle 10 miles from the laser, so I guess by sending the light off in all directions (not at all like your normal use of a laser) it's possible that it wouldn't be a problem.

Out here in Hawaii, the summit of Mauna Kea is an "informal" no-fly zone. There aren't any major flight paths that would cross it anyway, and since there are telescopes on it, folks have basically just agreed not to go flying over when we're trying to see things.

This has become a little more important in recent years, since the folks over at Keck [hawaii.edu] use a laser to ionize stuff in the sodium layer of the atmosphere and create an artificial "guide star" that they can then measure the light from to correct for atmospheric interference. This is part of their adaptive optics, I think. That's a 15-watt laser, which could really ruin a pilot's day.

And Gemini North [gemini.edu], across the summit from Keck, is about to start playing with a big bright toy too.

They've got a pool of "plane spotters" who spend half a night standing outside on the summit with a walkie-talkie. If they see any planes that look like they might get in the way, they radio in to turn off the laser before anything gets zapped.

I'm going to try to do that, one of these days. Goodness knows I'm up there enough as it is.

Re:Right....

[Trillan]

No. Hitting the plane with a missle is a way better approach.

Lasers? Hmmm...

[agraupe]

Could they not just use the targeted lights (I don't think they are lasers) that are used, at least in Canada (and probably US) for air traffic control in the event of a comm radio failure? Having looked right at one (from a plane, practicing approaches with comm failure), I can guarantee that it won't make a difference. The problem with any system is, if the pilot is not expecting to see something, it has to be rather large. There is a lot of area to monitor for traffic and whatnot, and even as I'm about to embark upon my first solo flight, I'm still not great at picking up traffic the first time I look.

There is restricted airspace everywhere, and usually a violation thereof means a serious consequence. My flight school had to modify all its flightplans into Medicine Hat, Alberta (I live in Calgary) because some genius forgot to check his chart for the military restricted zone. My point in this long rambling post is that, if you know there is restricted airspace nearby, try really really hard to stay the fuck away from it. If you don't know you're flying near restricted airspace, then you fucked up during the planning stage.

Re:Low-info article, and puny low-power lasers.

[zardo]

Seems to me this is just a public relations stunt. NORAD was initially formed during the cold war as a quick response system to scramble fighter jets in case a russian bogey entered our airspace. They never had the opportunity to truly flex those abilities up until 9/11, during which they had fighter jets up in the air pretty quick, too bad they flew out over the ocean and flew in circles. So now I guess they've found something they're good at, shining LAZERS (!) at small aircraft.

Seems to me they could shut NORAD down, let the national guard do its job, and the FAA should monitor restricted airspace.

Re:Why note encode data in the signal

[ineedbettername]

People who are color blind cannot be pilots, whether for commercial flights or otherwise.

Re:restricted airspace enforced by photon torpedo

[tyler_larson]

The "problem" is more a figment of our legislators' collective fears and feelings of self-importance than anything else.

After 9-11, congress felt that their own office space was definitely important enough to be a terrorist target (strange, I though the terrorists passed up DC and hit the Pentagon instead...), and since our country could not survive without the current set of elected officials, they MUST protect themselves for humanity's sake.

So they decided that any aircraft within a 25000-square-mile area around DC (which includes no small number of airports) must file a special type of flight plan, remain in contact with ATC at all times, and must follow a whole laundry list of restrictions. It's called an ADIZ, and it's a royal PITA, can delay your flight for hours, and has ATC overtaxed to such a degree that flight safety has been seriously compromised on a surprisingly huge number of documented cases. This includes more than a few near-collisions at airports that were avoided only because the pilots were paying closer attention than ATC, while the controllers were busy with these extra restrictions. The situation is a string of disasters waiting to happen. Without the pilots' extra vigilance, the death toll for Congress's arrogance would already be in the hundreds.

In the mean time, there have been a large number of airspace infringements. These are generally caused by things like equipment malfunctions (eg. radio or transponder that goes bad in flight), unintentional flight path deviations (like being blown off course), and sometimes lack of knowledge about how damn huge this protected airspace really is. It's really a unique and unprecidented situation, and some older pilots don't know what to make of it. And on at least one high-profile occasion, the problem was the incompetence of the defense department.

In the near unanimous opinion of us non-congresspeople, the problem is the airspace itself. We're no safer--and in fact, many people's lives are often at risk because of it, including (and especially) all normal air passengers in and around DC. But rather than dismantling the airspace, they're working to strengthen it. This includes the recent addition of missile installations (whose sole purpose is to shoot down Americans), and now this laser warning system--none of which exists even around actual prohibited airspace.

What congress needs to learn--and what they'll never admit--is that congressional elected officials are (a) not a serious terrorist target, and (b) completely and absolutely expendable. We may even be better off if we were to wipe them out and start over.

Ironic subnote: I frequently fly my plane directly over NORAD without violating any airspace at all. In fact, I could fly it right down the tunnel and the only regulation I'd be breaking is the one about "500 feet from any structure, vessel, etc."

Re:Why note encode data in the signal

[wjsteele]

NOTAMs are nice... when they are published before your flight. However, during the Presidential Election, NOTAMS and TFR were put up with only 30 minutes notice. I happened to land at my homebase at Blue Ash (ISZ) in Cincinnati only to find out that 10 minutes later a TFR was up. The guy who took off after me, turned north and flew right into it. We were not in the "notification area" of the TFR so noone at the airport (3 FBOs on the field) even knew about it, but were literally .6 miles south of it. Anyway, he was escorted back by F16s and subsequently got his 15 minutes of fame on the nightly news. There needs to be a better system and lasers can be used to help out.

Bill