The laser weapons developed by Russia that could blind a sniper or kill a drone ...Middle East

When a Russian “spy ship” targeted an RAF patrol aircraft with lasers off the coast of Scotland this week, it prompted a stark warning from the Defence Secretary about this “deeply dangerous” action.

“We are ready,” John Healey told Vladimir Putin, apparently reserving the right to use force if the vessel turned towards British territory.

Yet key details about exactly what happened – including the type of laser used by the Yantar’s crew, if it was just one beam or several, and how it affected crew inside the P-8 Poseidon jet – are still to be revealed.

Experts suspect that a cheap handheld laser pen may have been all that was used on this occasion.

However, it will lead to concerns about military uses of lasers becoming more common, more deadly and more difficult to tackle.

A source at the Ministry of Defence says the use of lasers on ships against aircraft “happens more frequently than openly reported”.

The proliferation of laser weapons

Like many other countries, Russia has been developing a range of laser armaments in recent years, including technology that may be able to destroy drones and blind snipers.

There appears to be evidence that ground-based models are being used during the country’s invasion of Ukraine, according to Dr David James, a specialist in Russian laser weaponry based at Cranfield University, which is part of the UK Defence Academy.

Russia’s portable PAPV laser system can be operated by a team of two and is designed to “detect and then attack a magnifying sight,” which snipers use on their rifles to aim at long distances, James explains.

If it were fired down a sniper’s gunsight, “it would cause a major hemorrhagic lesion and a bleed into his eyeball from the retina, causing a permanent loss of vision”.

Russia also unveiled a new truck-mounted laser system last month that it claims is capable of disabling several drones per minute.

However, Ukraine has derided previous Russian claims about using a “new generation of laser weapons” that could supposedly even kill satellites, saying it it is propaganda.

The type of laser directed at the P-8 from the Yantar may have been far more modest, however. In fact, it could have been the same type of pointer that anyone can buy for just a few pounds, according to James.

This would not damage the aircraft but could distract the pilots and potentially harm their eyesight at least temporarily, potentially leading to a crash.

“That’s the easiest thing to do: someone on deck holding it in their hand and pointing it at the aircraft as it flies by,” suggests James.

Given the speed and altitude that jets fly at, there might be doubts over how effective this can be. But these gadgets are surprisingly powerful and easy to use, he adds.

“Even if you’ve got a bit of the jitters and your hands are shaking, at a couple of kilometres you could probably hit your target a third of the time.”

He explained that while people generally think of lasers shining consistently narrow beams, about the width of a pencil, in reality their light tends to widen over distances.

“By the time it gets to the aircraft cockpit, it could be a metre or two across.” This makes it more likely that a beam will dazzle and distract a pilot, he explained.

This also makes the light less intense and therefore less dangerous to eyes. Permanent sight damage from a laser shone at a plane from the ground is unlikely, a study in the British Journal of Ophthalmology found in 2016.

But even a temporary distraction or sight issue could prove deadly for pilots if they cannot see what they are doing. The Civil Aviation Authority has warned they “can be blinded for up to ten seconds followed by over a minute of impaired vision.”

How laser weapons are becoming more powerful

For more intense and accurate lasers to be used at sea, they would need to be bigger and mounted on a turret.

The US Navy has already fitted laser defences to at least three of its warships, saying these are capable of “defeating unmanned aerial vehicles by disabling or destroying their sensors”.

Such technology is quickly becoming far more powerful. The Ministry of Defence announced this week that its new DragonFire laser – capable of hitting a target the size of a £1 coin from a kilometre away – will begin to be fitted to a Royal Navy destroyer for the first time in 2027, in a programme costing £316m.

Developed by the European defence company MBDA, it has shot down high-speed drones during tests in the Hebrides and costs just £10 per shot, making it far cheaper than using missiles.

The Yantar is a research vessel which Nato believes has been tasked with locating and mapping the UK’s vital communication cables and energy pipelines – which could be cut or fitted with bombs by the ship’s mini submarine.

Reviewing photos of the Yantar, James has not spotted any sign of a mounted laser turret, but he says that many uncertainties remain after Healey’s statement.

“One thing he may have deliberately avoided is talking about what colour the laser is, so we don’t know what wavelength it is. We don’t know what range it was done at and we don’t know how well they did it.”

He suspects it was probably a green beam, because that’s the wavelength the human eye is most sensitive to, and green handheld models remain hazardous even from miles away.

Ways the risks can be reduced

So what can pilots do to reduce the risks?

“There are certain drills they may have been taught to go through if they are illuminated,” says James. “The first thing you do is to stay deadly calm. Second is turn away from the laser.

“The third thing – this is going to sound odd – is you turn all the cockpit lights up. That’s so the ambient scene around you, inside the cockpit, becomes quite bright, so your iris reduces in size and you’re less likely to be injured by the laser.”

Modern helmet visors should offer a good degree of protection. But BAE Systems has also developed a film that can be placed on the canopy of Typhoon jets to protect pilots from lasers without “without the need for heavily tinted industrial goggles”.

Revealing the technology in 2017, the company’s executive scientist Dr Leslie Laycock explained that this “allows pilots to more effectively see instruments and their surroundings, whilst simultaneously blocking the dangerous laser light.”

Until now, the risk to military pilots has mostly come from reckless members of the public.

As far back as 2010, a man was jailed for four months after shining a £4 laser pen bought on Ebay into the cockpit of an RAF Tornado jet, distracting the pilot and navigator while they were coming in to land.

Radu Moldovan, a Romanian fruit picker, had been playing with the pen during a barbecue on a farm near RAF Leuchers in Fife and caused the Tornado to abort two landings. The jet’s navigator located the source during their third attempt and provided police with coordinates.

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Laws against this kind of action were strengthened in 2018, extending the maximum prison sentence to five years, but it has continued to be a problem.

The Suffolk air base RAF Lakenheath, where the US Air Force stations F-15 and F-35 fighter jets, issued a warning after “lasing” incidents last year.

However, it appears the tactic is becoming more common at sea.

This summer, Germany accused a Chinese warship of shining a laser at one of its military aircraft which was protecting cargo ships in the Red Sea from missiles launched by Houthi militants in Yemen. China denied the claim.

James doubts that using lasers to dazzle and distract would be a very effective tactic in battle, especially as it would give away an enemy’s location, but it has a big “nuisance value”.

It is a bigger danger to pilots in slower aircraft, which are easier to target and cannot get away so quickly. “You won’t find in the UK a military helicopter pilot who has not been dazzled,” says James.

Russia’s treaty-breaking actions

Experts believe the Yantar may have broken Russia’s INCSEA treaty with the UK, which was updated in 2021.

The agreement now states that neither side should use lasers that “could inflict harm on the health of personnel or damage the equipment” on their aircraft or ships.

John Foreman, a former UK Defence Attache to Moscow who helped negotiate the recent revisions, said that Russia had been using lasers at sea since at least the 1980s.

Calling for “calm”, he said the UK Government must ensure crews are protected and formally protest to Moscow, but also called for Britiain to “send more weapons to Ukraine”.

The Russian embassy in London has hit back against Healey’s “provocative statements” about the Yantar.

“Russia’s actions do not impinge upon the interests of the UK, nor are they intended to undermine its security. We have no interest in British underwater communications,” it said in a statement this week.

“London is contributing to the further erosion of European security, creating conditions that could lead to new dangerous incidents.”

@robhastings.bsky.social

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