The suction approach to boundary layer management was researched by NASA and others but never came into practical use because of the energy required for suction and the frequent blocking of the pinholes used by insects and miscellaneous debris.
As for the development of LENR, there are similarities with electricity, personal computers, and the Internet.
. Due to the work of Faraday and Maxwell, the basic physics of electromagnetism was understood fairly well by the mid 19th century, but the technology and devices for practical application took another two or three generations. The ensuing technological revolution continues today and defines much of modern life.
As for PCs, even as they were first developed and came to market, it took two decades before the essential ancillary concepts and technologies of the graphic user interface and computer mice were developed and marketed. The Xerox Corporation famously invented them at their PARC facility but then dropped the effort as a diversion from their core business of copy machines.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates though got tours of PARC and saw the means to take personal computers from a hobbyist niche to mass application. And Gates and his crew recognized that good software was needed and could be protected and paid for via copyright.
The Internet was first developed by DARPA as a way for the US government to link and get better use from the supercomputer centers that they had set up at various universities around the country. Yet Dale Lickliter, the key figure in DARPA's funding and management of the first routers and the resulting DARPA net, recognized the revolutionary potential of the technology and insisted on the open communication protocols that define the Internet.
I see LENR as handicapped by the lack of both any practical devices and the absence of a proven and widely accepted physics theory to guide research and development. I expect though that both will be remedied within the next few years, which will then trigger a massive investment of time and money into the field.
There is a theory that for us to understand and apply the technology of UFOs requires just a handful of innovations in physics and technology over the next hundred years or so. Perhaps LENR will open the way to doing so.
The problem of insects and rain clogging the suction holes was solved by applying sinterization, creating a metallic ‘aerosponge’ which also had the net result of vastly increasing tensile strength. You would learn this if you read Renato Vesco’s book.
As far as LENR theory, there are dozens of theories just like there are dozens of theories of gravity. But gravity is very well described mathematically, we just don’t know why. There is also no widely accepted theory for high temperature superconductors.