In the past 90 days there have been three reports of airliners having been "interfered with" in flight by lasers directed into their cockpit. The source of the lasers is unknown. One of the aircraft was above 5,000 ft AGL when the incident ocurred.

These incidents occured in US airspce within the continental, lower 48 states.

This is to be contrasted/compared against intelligence seized in Afghanistan that showed an investigation by terrorists on the feasibility of using lasers to interfere with the vision of flight crews on final approach in an attempt to induce an accident.

One of the incidents was reported in the natiaonal media within the last 15 days but attracted little attention.

A search on cnn.com or msn.com may reveal the report on these happenstances.

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Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com

Livermore Lab had an entire section devoted to laser blinding of pilots 15 years ago. Someone finally realized the power required to blind the pilot was a tiny fraction of that required to damage the plane. There was publically available data describing the physiological effects and power requirements.

"This is to be contrasted/compared against intelligence seized in Afghanistan that showed an investigation by terrorists on the feasibility of using lasers to interfere with the vision of flight crews on final approach in an attempt to induce an accident. "

Another example of Tom Clancy novels used as the terrorists' handbook of clever ideas. Maybe they will read through to the end and see that the good guys win and the bad guys lose.

Well, I think the US military has also used some of Tom Clancy's ideas too.

I think it was his sweeping epic Red Storm Rising that included a passage where fast attack submarines used T-LAM advanced tactical Tomahawks to attack land targets in southern Europe from submerged positons in the Med.

I'll be darned- seemed like such a good idea we decided to go ahead and do it during Operation Desert Storm in 1991.

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Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com