It might seem contradictory, but the DoD cares more about it's people than most organisations and at the same time is more than willing to risk lives for progress. Consider the initial proponent / researcher of car seat belts in the US was the Air Force which studied the issue in large part because car crashes where killing more pilots than airplane crashes (at the time). At the same time, they are vary willing to test new airplanes even though test pilots often die. And more than that they where willing to risk a pilot to recreate the conditions of a crash to find out why it happens.

If you run the numbers the DoD has directly saved more US lives since WWII in that same time period. Which is not to say it's worth the budget just more useful than you might think.