How easy would it be for a drone with a focused laser to start an urban fire?

[Votto]

I "flick my Bic" every evening to start the fire in my fireplace.

That seems a little too personal.

Please, no visuals.

 

[toobfreak]

I saw a tire get flattened by a green laser. From about sixty feet. Took all of 3 minutes.

Sure. Probably a 5 Watt laser. You can buy them for several hundred dollars.
But why use green when you could do as much with an IR laser and leave no visible beam?

 

[justoffal]

Sure. Probably a 5 Watt laser. You can buy them for several hundred dollars.
But why use green when you could do as much with an IR laser and leave no visible beam?

What? Invisible....wow...

 

[toobfreak]

What? Invisible....wow...

Sure. A laser with a beam wavelength longer than about 700 nanometers (7000 angstroms) would be invisible to the eye (NIR).
All things are possible if you have the bucks. ThorLabs will fix you right up.

https://www.thorlabs.com/NewGroupPage9.cfm?ObjectGroup_ID=4737

 

[fncceo]

In the late ‘60s my rocket club started a two-alarm fire in an open field when one of our launches decided to go along the ground and not up in the air.

That was the most high tech fire I’ve ever started.