Forget the TSA and their shoe inspections. If you want to sound serious about airport security, bring in the lasers: Northrup Grumman and Raytheon are both starting to pitch ground-based systems for creating a shield around airports.

Northrop described Skyguard [a laser-based system that is designed to create a 5-kilometer bubble around airports or secure installations] as capable of destroying rockets, mortars, artillery shells, unmanned aerial vehicles, short-range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. Against shoulder-fired missiles, which are relatively easy to heat with a laser and destroy, the protective shield would extend to a 20-kilometer radius, Wildt said.
Raytheon, eyeing a similar market, has developed a ground-based airport protection system that uses high-power microwaves to protect commercial aircraft from shoulder-fired missiles.

On the one hand, increased security for aircraft and airports is a good thing. And it sure sounds neat, though the track record for missile defense isn’t exactly stellar.

On the other hand, if the fear is that someone will shoot down a plane, wouldn’t aircraft-based countermeasure solutions be more appropriate? (Alas, current-generation systems are apparently prohibitively expensive and/or difficult to implement for large commercial aircraft, though the price may drop with volume discounts.)

If you build the equivalent of a mini-ABM system and create a 5km bubble, then wouldn’t anyone with a brain who wants to do harm to planes set up shop just outside the bubble’s perimeter, at the 6km marker? While an Israeli charter flight was indeed targeted by a missile attack departing Kenya in 2002 (it missed), a Sibir Airlines plane was actually shot down by a missile (a in October 2001 nowhere near an airport: It happened over the Black Sea, and at cruising altitude.

Save the money. Skip the laser.