Originally Posted by
rickair7777
I doubt a mil activity is lasering civilian airways in an uncoordinated manner... especially since their lasers might be of the large-aperture, high-power variety.
Well if it was, it wouldn’t be the first time. And then of course there is the Boeing connection, who seem to be fouling up by the numbers recently:
https://www.boeing.com/features/2016...ery-06-16.page
An excerpt:
At Starfire Optical Range, a red warning sign flashes outside the doorway to the telescope whenever a laser is in use. A floor below, SOR employees occupy a control room and operate camera and adaptive optics systems. Clocks are set to Greenwich Mean Time, the benchmark for global connectivity. A test director is in charge. A safety officer is on duty. A spotter stands outside and watches overhead for approaching airplanes. Boeing employees bring a strong sense of purpose to the observatory and its advanced research.
"People here feel a real ownership in the site," said Josh Kann, a Boeing senior physicist and Associate Technical Fellow. "It's extremely interesting work. It's extremely challenging work. These are cutting-edge programs. You definitely understand there's a need for this kind of technology.
Yeah, these are the guys who leave their McDonalds wrappers in the fuel tank of brand new KC-46s.
Or that a nuclear submarine would run into a long ago charted undersea mountain, or a Ticonderoga class cruiser would run aground in Tokyo harbor which we’ve had pretty good charts of since the 1940s and now GPS navigation for as well.
And I never would have guessed that someone would ACCIDENTALLY have transported 6 nukes from Minot to Barkesdale either, in violation of the SALT treaty and just about every standing order regarding nuclear surety either, but all those things happened.
And most of their LASERS really aren’t all that dangerous - they just provide a way of adjusting the adaptive optics of their telescope to offset atmospheric effects. The problem generally comes when they try using them quasi horizontally rather than directly overhead.