Seems like a useful new addition: "Engineers at BAE Systems have created a novel technology so that pilots stop getting blinded by high-powered lasers. In September a student pilot in Tennessee was temporarily blinded when someone fired a high-powered green laser at his plane and lit up his cockpit. According to aviation officials, the light is ten times worse than driving past someone who keeps their high beams on After reports of laser incidents spiked in 2015 (7,703, up from 3,894 in 2014), they have slowly come down, but we are on pace to have about 7,200 laser incidents reported to the FAA in 2017. BAE's engineers may have a solution, which is important when you're talking about nearly 8,000 pilots flying blind at some point this year. The novel film is a lightweight, low cost, and flexible system that blocks out laser lights. The film still allows natural light to shine through the canopy with minimal color distortion, and it protects pilots from pesky laser-pointing perps. According to BAE, laser attacks primarily target planes as they land and take-off, when pilot vision is a premium. In most cases, they are a mere distraction, but they can also cause temporary blindness, painful burning in the eye, and even long-term vision problems, though rare. The film blocks the specific wavelengths that the lasers operate at, so pilots won’t have to wear heavily tinted industrial goggles. The laser technology will inevitably change because people will never cease to be terrible, but the film is adaptable, and can easily be upgraded and selectively tuned to combat new laser threats." David Mantey Nov 27, 2017
We had laser goggles to prevent YAG lasers (1.06 microns, IR) from blinding us during Desert Storm. The lasers being used to shine on aircraft are visible light lasers, usually red (0.63-0.68 microns) or green (0.52-0.57 microns), so developing a film to cut out both frequency bands without cutting down on vision is a very useful technology. Especially if the film can be tuned to add new laser bands, like blue at 0.36-0.48 microns. Too many bands in the film, though, and you can start to lose vision.
Completely agree on useful project, but not so sure that laser flashes are the big problem the article describes. In order to be even temporarily blinded, a pilot would have to look directly at a laser. Peripheral exposure can affect the eye as well, but in the context of nuisance flashes, only foveal exposure matters. I’m not aware of very many instances where that has happened. Again, I don’t know, but my suspicion is that many of these laser incidents are of momentary flashes noted by pilots who reported when no real problem resulted.
Yup, takes a relatively powerful laser in those bands to do eye damage, unlike a YAG. Must be pretty annoying, though. With the YAG, you see nothing, and then you really see nothing.
Nope, would not work. The film is designed to reflect the laser energy, which is what LIDAR needs to work. You would want a film that absorbs laser energy, and that is a little tougher. In the right frequency band, reflective film on your windshield might make your laser detector inoperative, though.
As said by Taz too; To circumvent a LIDAR reading, you need to deny the laser light from returning to the gun. It's not jamming the gun, you're just not giving the signal back.
