CSBA's solution? It's the same as Reagan's: lasers. A solid-state laser is expensive to build, but once it's built, you can keep firing as long as you have power. Instead of expending a $15 million missile with every shot, hit or miss, you're just using electricity.
"We're currently on a path where an enemy can impose costs against us," shooting our $15 million missiles at their $1 million ones, said the report's lead author, Mark Gunzinger, in a conversation with AOL Defense. "If we can counter that million-dollar missile with a $10 or $20 beam of light, that's cost imposition against them."
Gunzinger doesn't want to abandon interceptor missiles ("kinetic" weapons) in favor of lasers (aka "directed energy"): "You've got to have both," he said. "But right now kinetics is the only part of that spectrum [of options] that we're seriously funding. Directed energy is still a set of technology development efforts that have not transitioned to real-world capabilities. The point is, they're at the point where they could transition given enough support."
Will that support be forthcoming? In an era of tight and uncertain defense budgets, that's not likely.