The U.S. Air Force is planning to spend nearly $200 million on special glasses and visors to protect pilots’ eyes from dangerous lasers like the ones the Pentagon accuses China of firing into the cockpits of U.S. warplanes. (www.govexec.com) 更多...
Why is there no pair of glasses covering all my lasers? The radiation that is visible to humans lies between 380–780 nm (the exact limits are different in each person). In order to cover all lasers you would need a material that does not transmit any radiation for visible radiation, which means it is completely black. When you block all visible radiation, the only wavelengths left are invisible to the human eye. If you have several lasers in this area, then it is necessary to use several pairs of glasses. But even if you do not want to completely block all wavelengths or have ’just a few wavelengths‘ to cover, the glasses may be too dark. Usually the protection within a material slowly increases until it reaches the required protection level at a given wavelength. This means that it not only covers the required wavelength, but also areas below and above it (with lower Optical Density). Therefore, if you want to cover several wavelengths in the visible spectrum the Optical Density curves will overlap, resulting in dark filters or glasses.
Could a fold down visor provide flight information but it is configured to bounce the laser energy off the visor thus protecting the pilots eyes. I am sure there are coatings can be applied so the laser energy is defeated. In a sense we are giving the aircraft a pair of expensive sun glasses.
But that would not provide protection from any direction other than through the HUD. coated helmet visors and eyeglasses are likely the best and most cost effective means of combating this issue.
I expect it is a lot less expensive and lot quicker to replace the visors and eyeglasses than to apply coatings or replace all of those windscreens and windows.