A future addition for America’s airlines too, perhaps?

Reuters reports from Jerusalem:

Israel will replace the flare-firing systems it has installed on some of its passenger planes to defend against missile attacks with non-pyrotechnic lasers deemed safer abroad, officials said.
An Israeli airliner narrowly escaped being shot down by al-Qaeda over Kenya in 2003, prompting state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) to develop Flight Guard, a device that detects heat-seeking missiles and diverts them with flares. Flight Guard has been placed aboard a number of Israel El Al Airlines jets.
Officials said the new Israeli system, developed by El-Op, a subsidiary of Elbit Systems Ltd., will use a laser to “blind” the heat-seekers in shoulder-fired missiles.
“Work on the system began three years ago, specifically for helicopters. Adapting it for bigger aircraft, for planes, will, to all appearances, take another two years,” El-Op deputy director Yisrael Anschel told Israel’s Army Radio.
A security source said the El-Op system is provisionally called MUSIC (Multi-Spectral Counter MANPADS System) and that its broad-array laser can “take on 1,000 threats at once.”
“It knocks the missile out of the sky, which carries none of the risks of a pyrotechnic system,” the source said.