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Biggest factor, from history in winning a war is the prevailing doctrine and it's fit to the usage. The doctrine is an envolving beast and often times lags behind the technologies. The factors that won US the pacific war was a combination of specific technology - radar + decoding, tactics - squad flying manuvures that maximizes advantages and expose enemy's weaknesses, and strategic - the organisation of of task forces around navel strike power, rather than the outdated doctrine of battleships (surface action) and airpower as support.
If it costs $ dollars to train a pilot, then what's the marginal return on training the pilot an extra $ dollars in terms of survivability? If the answer is 'x minutues', then it makes sense to go make more babies rather than spending a couple years + $ for a couple extra minutes.
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