You're ignoring that the military's job is to the defeat the enemy. If a marine is down, then the operation to rescue him/her by necessity involves defeating or inflicting a severe blow to the enemy.
The same is arguably true of a shuttle rescue mission for that matter: having never been done, the thinking and technological requirements of such a thing, and the grand experiment of seeing if it all works, would be worth the effort.
As noted, since the Colombia disaster NASA took to prepping "launch on necessity" shuttle missions.
The same is arguably true of a shuttle rescue mission for that matter: having never been done, the thinking and technological requirements of such a thing, and the grand experiment of seeing if it all works, would be worth the effort.
As noted, since the Colombia disaster NASA took to prepping "launch on necessity" shuttle missions.