Just after midnight last Thursday, a transiting Chinese military vessel shone a military-grade laser at an Australian air force plane conducting maritime surveillance just north of Australia.
"I can see it in no other way than an act of intimidation," Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters on Sunday, adding that it put Defence Force lives at risk.
"I thought it was a reckless and irresponsible act."
Mr Morrison said it was unprovoked and unwarranted, and through diplomatic and defence channels.
Labor leader Anthony Albanese described it as an "outrageous act of aggression", while Defence Minister Peter Dutton said using a military-grade laser could result in the blindness of the crew and damage the equipment.
So, when did lasers become a method of defence?
Why do militaries use lasers?
Defence forces have used lasers since they were invented in the late 1950s, Declan Sullivan, who has a Masters in strategic studies from the ANU's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre told The Feed.
Mr Sullivan said in the past it was to either “paint a target” or for “range-finding”.
The first helps to guide weapons onto targets, with the laser accurate over long distances.
He said this type of laser - kind of like a laser pointer - is basically invisible.
“You could be standing there with a laser on you, and not know. If you don't hear the aircraft, you may not even know that there's a danger at all,” said Mr Sullivan.
The other common way lasers are used by defence forces, including Australia’s, is to help determine distances by bouncing a laser off a surface.
The incident that occurred last week, though, is something called laser dazzling, said Mr Sullivan.
“This is where you use lasers to disorientate enemy forces basically by blinding them temporarily.”
The Chinese laser was aimed at a RAAF P-8A Poseidon aircraft similar to this one. Source: Royal Australian Defence Force
Dazzlers are typically used to blind - or burn - the sensors of a drone, or blind people aboard an aircraft. This is not a tactic known to be used by Australia, Mr Sullivan said.
"Lasers are used by the Australian Defence Force (ADF) for a variety of purposes including range finding," a Defence spokesperson told The Feed.
"The ADF follows strict safety guidelines when using any laser devices."
While lasers made primarily to blind humans were unveiled in 1995 by China, any device of the kind was banned in the same year under the United Nations Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons.
Mr Sullivan said although these lasers might not have been designed to blind people or even drones, they could still cause permanent injury with misuse.
“When lasers go a significant distance, they start to break up … When they hit things like the cockpit of an aircraft, it's not like a little laser pointer, it's more like someone shining a laser torch at you and it's incredibly disorientating and confusing, and very harmful,” said Mr Sullivan.
Back in 2008, a number of planes and helicopters flying over Sydney suffered a series of coordinated attacks in which somebody attempted to blind pilots using laser pointers.
The government banned the possession and importation of laser pointers with a power output greater than 1 milliwatt soon after.
A man with a laser beam shines the powerful light towards a NSW Police chopper. Source: NSW Police
An act of intimidation: ‘No other way to see it’
Mr Sullivan said the act could only be seen as hostile.
“First of all, you're hitting an aircraft with a laser that's going to blind the pilots … The other thing that's going on is that you really only use lasers if you're ‘painting a target’,” said Mr Sullivan.
“It’s not only saying ‘hey, we're going to blind you’ it's also saying ‘hey, we've got our weapons pointed at you.’”
Most if not all aircraft or warships usually have some laser capability, Dr Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst in defence strategy and capability at Canberra-based think tank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told The Feed.
“It’s not only saying ‘hey, we're going to blind you’ it's also saying ‘hey, we've got our weapons pointed at you.’”
“There's no way they could not have known what they were doing,” said Dr Davis, who added that this laser was particularly powerful.
“[Australia] is always very conscious of the fact that lasers can be dangerous … there are rules of engagement and laws that we follow that the Chinese do not necessarily follow.”
Do we have destructive lasers?
Damaging lasers that can emit high energy to destroy something, or Star Wars-like lasers, as Dr Davis calls them, aren’t in use – but they are in development.
Dr Davis said the recent activity is a taste of what is to come in modern warfare.
“All the major powers, the US, China, Russia, are all working on directed energy weapons, which are actual weapon systems,” said Dr Davis.
“I think sometime this decade we will start to see laser weapons appearing and that potentially is a game-changer because you have essentially a weapon that can deliver a destructive effect over a long-range but at a very low cost.”
