The difficulty is choosing to fire a lower probability of kill weapon while defending a high-value asset (the ship) during a limited window of engagement.
By definition, cheaper interceptors are shorter range, which means you have less time for a Plan B if it fails.
The historical solution was to push air defense pickets farther out around high-value ships, but the US hasn't had anything affordable in that class since the Perries referenced in the article.
Aka, if you have an SM-2 or ESSM to fire to defend an Arleigh Burke+ at maximum range... you're going to fire it.
I don’t think it’s even theoretically possible to defend an aircraft carrier sized target against a sufficiently concentrated missile/drone attack within say a 5 minute window 200 km offshore.
Even if we assume absurdities like quadrupling the number of reactors, 100% efficient lasers, a dozen escort ships also with their own lasers, etc…