Well, one system you have a falling burning missile, one system you have a falling live missle and burning flares, and no system you either have a falling burning aircraft, or a burned out live missile that missed.
My vote is with the ones that think this is foolish on normal commercial airliners.
At almost every airport in this country you can get close enough to the end of the runways that nothing will be able to react quickly enough.
Think it’s just a feel-good waste of effort and money.
I tend to agree with your overall view on this. If they do feel they have to go ahead with some kind of system, I guess I’d rather see it go with a more tried and easier maintainable system of flares than the laser system. What the heck would happen if a plane is taking off and a small jet is landing at an adjacent runway and the thing mistakes the hot jet engines of the other plane as a missile and does something to that plane? Don’t tell me it couldn’t happen.