Airborne laser is a safety headache on the ground

17 Jun 2002

US plans to fit an aircraft with a laser to shoot down ground-launchedmissiles are posing novel laser safety problems.

Many militarylasers are hazardous to eyes or skin over distances of 3 to 15kilometres and pose controllable problems for training militarypersonnel, ILSC 99 heard. The new aircraft-borne lasers are hazardousover distances of about 29 000 kilometres.

The Air Force also hasa problem modelling what happens to the laser energy when it strikes amissile rising from the ground. The military needs to know what happensin order to train personnel. It has written software to predict how curvedsurfaces would reflect the enormously energetic pulses and how thereflections might threaten people on the ground.