While it is hard to believe that someone in the US military believed that such a mission for uranium extraction can be successful, it is at least equally hard to believe that the US military has spent around a half of billion dollars just for saving 2 men, while also risking the lives of a very large number of other US combatants.

Saving your men is important, but it should have been easy to do that at a much lower cost and at much lower risks of additional personnel losses, if that had been the true mission goal.

Familiarise yourself with the SANDY aircrew rescue missions in Vietnam.

Vast amounts of hardware and many American lives were lost trying to recover downed pilots, even when it was known it was a body retrieval operation.

For one famous example, the rescue of BAT21 Bravo resulted in the loss of five aircraft, the deaths of eleven and two taken as POWs.

It is a point of principle that the USAF does not apply a 'cost effectiveness' test to aircrew recovery.

I can certainly believe that the assurance the US gives to its pilots that they will never be left behind and the public demonstration of that assurance as something the US values in the billions of dollars.

It is also clear that if the mission was not a purely rescue mission then it would have taken a lot more equipment than what appears to have been used. Even for an escalade style high-risk low-probability mission it would be inadequate.

I think the most likely version of the claim would be that the Pentagon would have used the planning and execution of the mission as a valuable opportunity to learn for a dedicated mission to extract uranium in a contestable theatre. But even that is pushing it.