Chinese laser attack on Australian aircraft had ‘potential to be quite serious’

Scott Morrison has taken aim at China over a laser attack on an Australian surveillance aircraft.

Early on Thursday, a RAAF P-8A Poseidon was stuck by a military-grade laser while monitoring a Chinese ship in the Arafura Sea.

Professor of Asia-Pacific Security Studies at Macquarie University, Dr Bates Gill, says “incidents like this have the potential to be quite serious”.

“Depending on the intensity and angle of these laser beams you can blind or temporarily blind pilots, and disorient them … and it does interfere, could interfere, with the guidance systems on the aircraft,” he told Ross and Russel.

Dr Gill says there have been previous laser attack incidents, but they’re “not super common” and it’s possible the public aren’t always alerted to them.

“There have been incidents in the past that were reported publicly. In 2019 or so there were a number of incidents where the Chinese lased Australian airforce aircraft over the South China Sea. But it’s probably also true that some of these just go unreported …  so it’s hard to know,” he said.

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