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This question is similar, but only talks about guns. I don't mean a laser that is going to destroy the plane, but why aren't rear-mounted, rear-firing lasers that can blind a pilot a thing? Most of the concerns about weight and relative velocities from the other question disappear with a lighter-weight laser that is firing light.

Bob Watts
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    Infrared countermeasure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_countermeasure) or Directional Infrared Counter Measures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directional_Infrared_Counter_Measures) . – user3528438 Oct 24 '19 at 19:08
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    Sharks with frickin' lasers on their heads. Ummm... Planes with frickin' lasers on their tails! – FreeMan Oct 24 '19 at 19:17
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    If you ask a similar question on Worldbuilding, phrased different enough as to not be a cross posting (such as "what would be required for a laser..."), you'll get a very different set of answers. – Cort Ammon Oct 25 '19 at 07:05
  • Temporarily blinding with laser might be doable, no matter conventions and whatnot. But what have you achieved by that? Pilot will close his eyes and send you a missile. And hope his eyesight recovers in time to land. Next flight, all will use laser goggles. – Zizy Archer Oct 25 '19 at 10:58
  • @ZizyArcher laser glasses for what wavelength? You can build lasers for any visible light, and the only way to block those would be completely opaque. Don't think about auto-darkening stuff; one tunable laser I've got here could burn a hole in your retina in a nanosecond, and the other could dazzle you if not worse in a few picoseconds (the latter is a bit big, the former is the size of a suitcase). – Chris H Oct 25 '19 at 12:34
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    Air-to-air dog-fighting combat a la Top Gun basically doesn't exist anymore. Most of it is done with guided missiles from far beyond visual sight-range, so a laser to blind the pilot behind you would be of limited use. By the time they're close enough for that to be effective, they could've easily shot you out of the sky several times before you even knew they were there. – Darrel Hoffman Oct 25 '19 at 14:57
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    @J..., actually it's not that simple. This is what I do for a living. The ns laser I mentioned tunes in 0.1nm steps across the entire visible range. In one go, with enough power that a single pulse hitting your windscreen would dazzle you, and directly hitting your retina would leave a blind spot. That's not even optimised for this job (it's an OPG pumped by the third harmonic of a Nd:YAG, for any other laser scientists reading this). The best countermeasure would be a blacked out cockpit, flown by screen, but the cameras probably wouldn't like it either. – Chris H Oct 25 '19 at 15:43
  • But I'd actually use around 3 discrete lines, so that any reasonable blocking glass would block a lot of visible light. Seeing what's going on adding you is already hard with goggles to block up to 532nm (a high power green line) as everything goes orange. Add the need to block red and things get even harder. Narrow band blocking is only possible for small ranges of angles, and tends to cause interesting artefacts as the angle changes. – Chris H Oct 25 '19 at 15:49
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    @J... With military money it would be a matter of wanting it enough. Those single wavelength 1st generation systems could have been built 20 years ago (related systems for use on the ground were being investigated in the 90s and the main problem was power, otherwise they would lie have been man-portable). So with military backing the tech could be flying. You can get the harmonic for free when designing a narrowband blocker (e.g. holographic notch filters). Multi-bandpass is interesting but will be limiting in low light. Other reasons dominate - like attracting attention, and legality. – Chris H Oct 25 '19 at 16:30
  • @J... If they're commercial I'd be interested. It's normally the shift with angle that's the issue in work though. – Chris H Oct 25 '19 at 18:17
  • @J... Definitely worth a look in work (I'm a sort of deputy LSO as well as a researcher). I didn't know Iridian made glasses, but it's probably 10 years since I bought Raman filters from them – Chris H Oct 25 '19 at 19:37
  • @J... I suspect that's a major part of the difference in our views. Also IIRC lab laser glasses have some other fairly tight requirements that may be hard to meet with a reflective blocker – Chris H Oct 26 '19 at 06:26
  • Whatever the reason for not having them... there is a reason, and it's not because of Air Force stupidity. – RonJohn Oct 27 '19 at 04:57
  • Because you need a 747 to put a weaponized laser into the air, and it "would need a laser something like 20 to 30 times more powerful than the chemical laser in the plane right now". Boeing_YAL-1. Status: canceled. – Mazura Oct 27 '19 at 22:45

5 Answers5

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Such weapons are not used by countries that abide by the Geneva Convention:

It is prohibited to employ laser weapons specifically designed, as their sole combat function or as one of their combat functions, to cause permanent blindness to unenhanced vision, that is to the naked eye or to the eye with corrective eyesight devices.

For the U.S.A., page 45 of Navy Shipboard Lasers for Surface, Air, and Missile Defense says: google books screengrab

Camille Goudeseune
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    Hmmm. .... is that really the REASON they are not used? – quiet flyer Oct 24 '19 at 21:19
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    @quietflyer it's one reason. Another reason is power requirements. – jwenting Oct 25 '19 at 03:34
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    The convention, power requirements, limited usability, lasers being awfully hard to target and the collateral damage of missing the target, there's a lot of reasons not to do this. It's generally more useful to shoot an enemy bird out of the sky than turn it erratic by blinding the personnel. – Mast Oct 25 '19 at 06:53
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    @quietflyer Remember what chemical weapons caused to their survivors in WW1. No-one wants thousands or more blind laser-weapons survivors. And remember, even if you are in a technically advanced country currently mostly fighting developing countries or insurgents with little technology, next time your soldiers maybe those that return home blind. – Vladimir F Героям слава Oct 25 '19 at 12:25
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    @jwenting power considerations used to be an issue. Modern solid state lasers are much smaller, lighter, and more efficient. Scanning a small cone pointed in roughly the right direction could be done in a kilowatt (power consumption), with enough beam power to draw permanent stripes inside your eyes. A 10kW system would be doable and have much more chance of hitting, either to permanently blind or to dazzle, depending on range and how divergent you make the beam – Chris H Oct 25 '19 at 12:38
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    @VladimirF: So it's better for thousands to return home in body bags than return home blind? – R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE Oct 26 '19 at 18:58
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    @R, Taken literally, yes, hundreds of countries have said so. Obviously the issue isn't that simple, and it's also beyond the scope of Aviation SE. – Camille Goudeseune Oct 26 '19 at 19:05
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    @CamilleGoudeseune Yes, it's about banning "unfair" wartime practices. In peacetime, everything is OK: “The Geneva Convention declared tear gas to be a form of chemical warfare, and it is banned in such conflicts. However, it is not banned in civilian situations, either by individual use of pepper spray, nor by law enforcement use in the form of tear gas.” – cyco130 Oct 26 '19 at 21:27
  • @cyco130: That's one of the problems the US had/have in e.g. Iraq and Afghanistan. By insisting on declaring everything a "war" (war on drugs, war on terror, etc.) and using soldiers for everything, they limit their options in peacekeeping. A soldier policing a crowd can only kill them, a police officer can use tear gas, tasers, water cannons, rubber bullets, noise weapons, etc. – Jörg W Mittag Oct 26 '19 at 22:08
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    @R..: Yes, more or less. The basic idea of The Hague Convention, Geneva Convention and related Treaties is that soldiers are allowed to use weapons that are designed to kill individuals against other soldiers, and that's it. They are not allowed to use weapons against non-combatants, they are not allowed to use weapons that are not directed at individuals (WMDs, basically), and they are not allowed to use weapons that are designed to maim, or injure. This means that the entire arsenal of sub-lethal weapons that are available to police officers are off-limits for soldiers. – Jörg W Mittag Oct 26 '19 at 22:11
  • looks at techniques and weapons used in Guantanamo, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Gaza. okay, what's the real reason? – Eric Duminil Oct 27 '19 at 13:36
  • I don't think this is really the answer, due to the part about "permanent blindness". Temporarily blinding an enemy pilot would still be both (theoretically) useful and in-bounds under the Geneva Convention. – aroth Oct 28 '19 at 00:31
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    @aroth assuming you can control it precisely enough for that. Ask anyone who deals in distance weapons, it is very hard to control severity of damage. – Harper - Reinstate Monica Oct 28 '19 at 02:19
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Besides the other answers, international law and the technical complexity of putting a laser on an airframe, lasers have interesting limitations as weapons. Lasers do not deal well with cloud cover. Hundreds of meters of cloud cover between two planes flying on instruments disrupts a laser's coherency, but not a guided missile's accuracy. After passing through a significant amount of cloud vapor, the laser will not have enough energy to damage the target or blind the pilot. You can imagine how unappealing spending money on a weapons system that is made useless by clouds is.

Another factor is that modern air combat is rarely 1 plane vs 1 plane. Ground radar, AWACS planes, satellites, and allied aircraft all work together. It does you no good to blind a single opponent if ground radar has locked on to you, because modern systems can pass that lock to missile launchers and other aircraft. Now anyone in range can launch a guided missile at you, a guided missile you can't blind.

As more airplanes become drone piloted, blinding the drone's cameras will not stop the operator from retaliating against you, because the drone's radar and other instruments are still functional.

So why spend money to solve a problem that is only tangentially related to your real problem? The problem is not that another pilot is in the sky. The problem is them being able to lock on to you with guided missiles, or even know you are around. If you have technology that prevents their missiles from acquiring an accurate lock, launching missiles is just a waste of money.

mstorkson
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The Geneva Convention only addresses permanent blinding. Temporary blinding is all it would take to render an enemy pilot unable to react for at least long enough for you to employ evasive maneuvers and/or come around for an offensive. That said, one wouldn't even need a laser. Any sufficiently bright LED array would do the job.

Of course, this assumes the enemy pilot isn't equipped with any kind of eye protection.

Therac
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weasel5i2
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In addition to the already mentioned Geneva convention, there is also the power requirements issue.

Lasers powerful enough for combat weapons require more electrical power than can be generated by a fighter (one reason why the YAL-1 was based on a Boeing 747).

Also, high power lasers generate a lot of heat. Heat dispersal in a small airframe is difficult, especially if you want to minimize your IR signature.

Camille Goudeseune
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jwenting
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    Is there a reason to believe that the power or space requirements for the YAL-1, designed to intercept ICBMs during their boost phase, would be comparable to the requirements for a laser designed to illegally blind enemy pilots who are presumably in a dogfight with you? – Erin Anne Oct 25 '19 at 05:39
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    That really depends what you mean by combat weapon. Will it cut through the plane's hull? Doubtful, that indeed requires a lot of energy. But there are enough accounts of idiots blinding pilots with a laser pointer from their home. It only takes 1W to cause serious damage. – infinitezero Oct 25 '19 at 09:38
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    You can buy a laser pointer that can blind an airline pilot on Ebay for less than $50 that runs off of AA batteries – Tom J Nowell Oct 25 '19 at 15:38
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    There's a difference between "oops, we accidentally broke the Geneva Convention because we couldn't keep our weapon on target long enough to kill the pilot instead of just maim them wink" and "this weapon can only be used to violate the Geneva Convention." -- To have a blinding laser without immediate sanctions, such a weapon system would have to be plausible as an anti-vehicle weapon as well, hence the very high energy requirements. (Though heat dispersal isn't as much of an issue as implied. If you can deal with jet exhaust, you can deal with a laser weapon.) – Ghedipunk Oct 25 '19 at 16:33
  • @Ghedipunk Doesn't have to be anti-vehicle. A cover story could just be that it's intended to burn out the sensitive IR sensors in an incoming missile. – ceejayoz Oct 26 '19 at 01:49
  • @ceejayoz How do you target a missile? – curiousguy Oct 26 '19 at 16:01
  • @curiousguy Same way you'd target any other small flying object. Radar, visual tracking, etc. Laser dazzlers for inbound missiles already exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtora-1 So do anti-mortar interceptors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter_Rocket,_Artillery,_and_Mortar – ceejayoz Oct 26 '19 at 16:04
  • @ceejayoz I thought even small planes (and missiles) were never targeted so precisely they would be hit right in the nose. – curiousguy Oct 26 '19 at 16:11
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    @curiousguy It's easier to point a laser at something than it is to hit it with something physical. Adjustments are instant. Missiles will have proximity fuses to increase the chance of a kill via shrapnel, but we've had long had laser designators that can lock on and track small moving objects. – ceejayoz Oct 26 '19 at 16:15
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    What about the visual interference generated by the jet exhaust? – RonJohn Oct 27 '19 at 04:56
  • @ErinAnne: No, there is no reason to believe that, especially since it isn't true. The power needed for a laser weapon that can blind a pilot over a reasonable distance is well within any military plane's power budget. – President James K. Polk Oct 27 '19 at 18:59
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Because weapons of mass destruction are maintained and developed, the Geneva Convention might not be respected much during wartime.

Also, F-35s and F-22s have been mentioned in articles proposing laser weapons systems:

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/f-35s-and-f-22s-could-soon-fire-laser-weapons-think-laser-dogfights-83586

https://www.militaryaerospace.com/power/article/14034450/laser-weapons-jet-fighters-unlimited-magazines

If ignoring the Geneva Convention, I'm not sure how effective such a weapons system would be. Wouldn't it be rather trivial to mitigate most or all of the damage by the enemy pilot, once such an imagined laser system is known to be used? The pilot would merely need to wear protective laser goggles or use other means of limiting the amount of light that enters the eye. The cost of developing the laser weapons system, compared with cost of the protection against it (laser goggles) doesn't seem to add up.

Also, an aircraft that sends out a continuous hundreds-of-kilowatt laser beam towards your own sensors provides an attractive target for your own missile.

You might impair the other pilot's visual flight when the beam is on, but looking down at the instruments to fire a missile should be possible when sufficient eye laser protection is worn.

Camille Goudeseune
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AlphaCentauri
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    A laser beam in the range of hundreds of kilowatts of continuous power is far beyond blinding. Solar irradiance is in the realm of 1.4kW/m^2 and unmitigated direct sun exposure is already a problem for many kinds of sensors; the kinds of mitigations you can take to prevent those sensors from being blinded outright go on to impact the sensors' ability to detect things that aren't as bright. – Erin Anne Oct 27 '19 at 01:53