I agree with slice on this one.

The military is successful because they can do things the regionals can't. They NEED pilots. While the military does too they have a large pool just waiting around. They get to up their requirements. They take a guy and test his breaking point daily. He's under constant pressure of failing. He spends all his day studying and when he's not doing that or getting his 4hrs of sleep he's working out then flying. You can't expect some cheeseball with 500hrs putting forth that kind of effort. All you can expect is someone to get their commercial then go split a light twin and do cross-countries everywhere while one of them supposidly was under the hood so they can both log it.

I currently fly a C-172 and a Merlin. I have about 80hrs in the merlin. I study the systems and books on it all the time yet I would never hop in and try and go solo. The two things that makes me different from some 500hr wonder are A)I have enough experience to know I'm not even close to knowing it all and B)I've had enough time to learn my limits. You CAN'T have both of these until you've flown a wide variety of aircraft with a wide variety of people.

Yes a pilot with 200hrs might make a carrier landing. But he sure as hell can't seem to fly a 172. I've had about a dozen military guys who fly T-38's and T-6's try and rent our company plane. They get ****ed off I tell them I want to check them out. Then they try and drive it into the ground going 120kias with flaps up wanting to kill us both.

Different people, different environments, different training for different jobs, and different situations. You simply can't compair military training per hour to some kid with 500hrs.