Tony writes:

There are a couple of problems with that statement. 1 if the beam is
that thin it would take exquisite marksmanship to hit someone's eye ...

True, but if you spread the beam, its intensity drops very rapidly.
Also, you need glass to spread the beam, and you'd need a way to focus
it so that it would be wide enough to sweep the cockpit but narrow
enough to not lose too much intensity. (Of course, if this is a
60-kilowatt laser, intensity shouldn't be a problem, but I don't know
what the bad guys have been using.)

Maybe they swept the cockpit in a pattern very rapidly? I wonder how
they managed to hit the pilots in the eyes with a collimated beam.

If they were really evil, they could use a laser outside the visible
light range. The pilots' eyes would be damaged and they wouldn't even
know why.

Off axis scattering in atmospheric transmissions is a serious problem
for high power lasers.

Just what kind of lasers have these people been using, and where are
they getting them?

I have a strong aversion to laser light shows. Even when projected on
a screen, the beams are highly collimated, and if the screen is
specular (as many projection screens are), you can still get bits of
the beam aiming straight at you.

There would probably be an instinctive glance towards the source of
that pretty green light at night.

Yes, looking towards a bright light is a reflex, but not always a safe
one.

Infra red lasers would be a different sort of problem.

Yes, as above.

There was some stuff going on, maybe in Nevada, where very high
powered lasers were being used to perhaps target the moon, and there
were temporary restrictions on that airspace. (1970s or early 80s).
These were big power hungry lasers though, not the sort of thing that
are easily available for bad guys.

There are corner-cube reflectors on the moon that can be used to
bounce lasers. The beams spread to a mile or two at their
destination, IIRC, so they have to be pretty strong.

Not only is a laser attack bad in the same way that any other attack
is bad, but it's also especially evil in that it can leave a pilot
blind, which is probably about one of the worst things that can happen
to a pilot, above and beyond the fact that it would obviously end his
flying days.

I think Shuttle pilots have been blasted by lasers, too, but I don't
remember the details.

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