Video: What The Heck! A Low-Level Nighttime Laser Scanning Flight?

Photo by Teledyne Geospatiale.

There's a good deal of misunderstanding and apprehension about things that fly. There are even some wild conspiracy theories surrounding unknown flights. Think the crazy chemtrail theory. In this case, there's actual video evidence of something happening. It isn't a case of spreading brain chips via 5G lasers---they use a different kind of plane for that. The answer to what the heck is happening here is even cooler than the stupid theories.

The video was shot near San Diego area Mission Beach, and that's a big clue. The laser light is green. That's Clue 2. The plane is a jet, and it's flying slow. That's kind of a clue as well.

What it's doing is not scanning the populace, but scanning the sea floor. One well-known property of green laser light is that it's good at penetrating water. Aircraft operated mostly by government agencies in charge of mapping things, such as coastal waterways, are outfitted with the LIDAR system, along with very precise GPS/WAAS positioning, and aircraft heading, attitude and altitude data. The LIDAR equipment scans the waterway, the green laser penetrating to the floor, and the reflective data, which shows the depths and contours of the bottom, are collected.

The data is extremely useful in several critical areas, including the ongoing maintenance of shipping channels, studying the effects of weather and ocean activity on coastal shelves and the associated shoreline's condition, including beach erosion and cliff side undermining. And because these waterways are always changing, data is collected on a regular basis to the nature and degree of those changes.

See, it's way cooler than reading brainwaves with 5G! And far more useful, too.

Plane & PilotStaff