There's been a spate of reports in the immediate past from airliner pilots about lasers being flashed into the cockpit. And one or two pilots have supposedly been blinded--at least temporarily--by these coherent light sources. The FBI has gotten into the act and is concerned that it could be a terrorist plot to incapacitate air crews and cause a crash on landing.

Fairly potent green lasers are available all over the place--my Google search turned up 115,000 mentions. Most, of course, are the garden variety 5 mw devices which are dismissed as too puny to do any damage. But look here. This one is touted as having a range of 10,000 feet and it's a 5 milliwatt laser. And here's a site with all kinds of high power stuff, up to 30 milliwatt green lasers. You can even buy "plans" to build a 200 milliwatt laser gun.

So is it terrorists? Probably not. I have a green laser that is supposedly less than 5 milliwatts output and I could easily shine it into an airplane cockpit if it was on approach and close to the ground. The human eye is highly sensitive in the green region and a dark adapted eye would sense even a puny little 5 mw beam as being very bright. I know this from experience.

The other unknown is tracking. Reports from pilots say the beam was in the cockpit for several seconds or even several times during the episode. FBI investigators believe it would take a stable tracking device to keep the laser pointed accurately for that long. I'm not so sure. If I stood near the approach end of a runway I believe I could score a few hits if I spent enough time. But with all the upsetment about lasers, I don't think it would be a good idea to try.

Update: Jay Manifold's site confirms my thoughts.