I find that comment quite odd. One of the major problems with the NHS is that financial provision is often independent of financial obligations.
I quite agree that there is a mismatch between funding and demand. My beef, not articulated well in my post, is that there are many in the NHS who are profligate with the resources. I'm not taking aim at the hard-pressed front line, rather the higher echelons that control spend. Personally, I've never understood how a Chief Exec on £250k could think it good practice to understaff wards, fail to tackle the stovepipe nature of secondary care or not wish to challenge single tender awards for clinical services provided by the awarder of that same contract.
I see what you are driving at but I know instances where crews have pressed on below fuel minimums or without weapons to achieve a necessary level of support.
One function of accounting attributes a common value to any action or commodity using money as a unit of measure, so that the value of a transaction can be calculated. The decision on whether an exchange is worth carrying out or not, should rest with the SMEs/affected groups/finance providers/operators etc and will take into account many other factors that are not so easily priced.
So, in your example, although I'm sure no-one would have produced cost-estimates for all the possible outcomes, informed decision makers would have decided that the potential benefits outweighed the potential risks of loss. The value of the losses would not simply have been the direct ones - but also the legacy of inaction or failure. On the one hand, you have a book price for equipment, plus another value for the lives of the crew - on the other hand, you have a value that is variable, depending on circumstances, opportunities, wider effects and appetite for risk.
The challenge for senior military commanders is always to interpret the data provided by "the bean counters" and ask themselves how they can leverage the allowable expense to maintain or even increase the value of the output. To help them, they could enlist
economists and
management accountants - and not simply accept the figure provided by
financial accountants and conclude that a cut is the only solution.
It's about how creative you can be in making the biggest bang for your buck, and what timescale you consider to be appropriate for the return on capital employed; certainly not about knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing. But a financial accountant won't tell you that - it's not their purpose.