Who are those people? Some actual/suspected foreign agents trying to interfere with the military air traffic/impact morale of the aircrews? Or mere hooligans?
For what it's worth, this is a good application of military technology with no loss of life. Firing lasers at aeroplanes is a Bad Thing™.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Blinding_Laser_Wea...
https://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-the-4-blinding-las...
> The Chinese military […]
They would, ostensibly, fall under the header of 'rouge state', but usually people just say 'red'.
Maybe regular posters to /r/unexpectedgwennhadu/?
On a more serious note, the Bretagne independence movement used to be quite strong (relatively speaking) until the mid- to late-1990s, I can see some people still not being happy with the Paris administration sending airplanes upon their lands.
I admit doing it once when I was a kid, but for like 10 seconds, but you never really know if you are pointing exactly at the aircraft, since it's very far away. I learned years ago that I did something illegal...
Of course, people who got caught are pointing those lasers long enough for those camera to spot them.
I guess that a loooot of people try this, but don't do it long enough, so they never get caught, and also since most aircrafts have no way to find who did it.
The ray is not "straight", it has a slight angle, meaning the dot is larger and larger when distance increases, so it's less luminous (but still very luminous, enough to blind you temporarily). It's also the reason why it has way more probability to "hit" somebody's eye.
You can spot an airplane, but you can't really see secondary light source on it, it's just too far away. Even if a laser is a lot of light, the dot is not emitting enough for the naked eye to see any difference.
The light from a laser is directed, meaning all its photons goes in one direction, hence why it will blind an eye. But when it hits a surface, the photons bounce in all directions, and thus those secondary photons land in your eye in lower quantity because they're spread.
The distance to target can give a false sense of safety to the perp. so interesting to see this article. I can't imagine the look on that person's face when the police knocked at the door!