This invention relates to a ground-based system to locate perpetrators of aircraft laser strikes.
Laser strikes against commercial aircraft are a growing problem in the United States. In the last decade there has been a large increase in the number of incidents reported to the Federal Aviation Administration, likely driven by the increasing availability of high power, low cost laser pointers. Reports increased rapidly in 2015, with 7,703 incidents compared to 3,894 in 2014.
Impacts to the pilot include distraction, loss of night vision, temporary flash blindness and retinal burning. These effects generally happen during the most critical takeoff and landing phases of flight when the aircraft are closest to the ground, and as a result they pose a serious safety hazard that has many public officials very concerned.
Current responses to these incidents are limited. For persistent incidents in a given location, air traffic controllers may change departure and landing patterns to avoid areas where laser strikes have been reported. For more egregious incidents, police helicopters may be deployed to try to find the perpetrator on the ground using the helicopter's onboard infrared sensors. Currently, this is the only way for law enforcement to locate and stop a perpetrator from future incidents, but very few perpetrators have been apprehended to date.
An object of the present invention is a ground-based system to automatically detect laser streaks and geolocate their origin, with coupling to an alerting system to allow a rapid law enforcement response and a post-event analysis system to support prosecution. The system disclosed herein holds the promise of persistent protection of high criticality air space around an airport which will lead to significantly greater potential for perpetrator apprehension and prosecution, with associated strong deterrent effects.