I had no idea it was so bad for pilots in the military. Being in the military myself, I must say I was always treated fairly. We couldn't make 8hr days work out in the field or when something "needed" to get done, but management was pretty good about treating people fairly and giving time off when appropriate. When just doing normal training and maintaining, almost every day was 8 hours. My brother on the other hand in the Navy, he had some stories about "standing watch" and how that was in addition to other duties during a "workday". Didn't seem to make sense to me to give someone a job and normal workday and then give them another shift right after that, unless it was so spread out that it happened rarely and equal time off was given, but that didn't seem to be the case, not to mention normal human exhaustion and performance are huge issues.