Recently a Delta pilot was forced to have his co-pilot do the landing as they came in to SLC en route from Dallas. Five miles away from the airport, they started to notice a laser beam bouncing around their cockpit. The beam struck one of the pilots in the eye, burning his retina and blinding him — this was no laser pointer, this was a higher power laser (more).
For under $2000 I could anyone with basic technical skills could build you a CO2 laser and a targetting system that could fire sustained bursts of blinding-level laser light accurately into the windows of a moving plane. I could Anyone could then start taking out planes and probably never be caught for it.
While the most likely explanation is a low-cost ground-based attack like the one I've just described, there are a lot of potential explanations. It might also be a stray (or guided) shot from a military satellite (more).
Post a Comment