https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...laser-pointers

One of the key topics we discuss here at The War Zone constantly is
counter-drone and short-range air defense capabilities, or the glaring lack
thereof, and other directed energy defensive systems. One such capability that
is emerging as an immediately obtainable and potentially robust solution to
countering some drones and missiles that rely on electro-optical and infrared
guidance systems are laser dazzlers. Basically, they fire a modulated laser beam
at the target, blinding its optical sensors and throwing it off track and even
downing it as a result. They can also be used to limit an enemy's ability to
gather intelligence via manned platforms by blinding their sensors. It looks
like a very low-end and impromptu version of this concept was put to work by
Chilean protesters very recently.

The video, which appeared on social media earlier in the week, shows a large
gathering of protesters shining high-powered handheld laser pointers, which have
been used by protesters recently to deter riot police and blind facial
recognition cameras, at a drone overhead. Those devices, shining at the drone's
optics from all different angles, sent it wobbling through the air, before
briefly recovering, just to nosedive again and crash into the ground. Check out
the video for yourself:

https://youtu.be/Wrn6Ym9BG8s

Some smaller hobby and commercial drones have various autopilot systems and
fail-safe software that allows them to maintain safe flight and even return to
their original point of origin if they lose contact with their controller, but
even with those capabilities, they wouldn't engage automatically if their camera
was blinded. Things happen fast and even engaging a fail-safe mode would have to
be done by the user quickly once their video feed is blinded. Regardless, in
this case, the laser pointers meant certain death for the lurking drone in
question.

While laser countermeasures that dazzle the infrared seekers on short-range
heat-seeking missiles have been a reality for many years—they are even finding
their way onto fighters now—more powerful and advanced dazzlers are now entering
the maritime environment. Russia has already fielded a dazzler system on some of
their surface combatants and the U.S. Navy has just installed its first dazzler,
named ODIN, on the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Dewey (DDG-105). You can
read all about this new system in this recent piece of ours.

The impromptu downing of the small drone in Chile via lasers is definitely
timely and the use of consumer-grade lasers could become a common application
for fending off drones in no-drone airspace and other sensitive areas. Just
blinding their optics and thus eliminating their reason for being overhead—to
capture video for various reasons—could be enough to deter some of them from
flying in the first place. Tying in a few dazzlers dispersed around a large area
into a counter-drone system with detection capabilities could make flying one
over a denied area entirely useless in the first place.

The only major issue with such a concept is target discrimination. The same
lasers that can blind drone optics may also blind human pilots, which continues
to be a big problem domestically and abroad. But many counter UAS systems use
modular radars, passive electronic sensors, and their own infrared cameras to
better classify potential drone threats. As such, using the lower power dazzlers
could be a fairly low risk and obtainable way of keeping unwanted drones at bay.

So yeah, those protesters were definitely on to something.




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