Originally Posted by
JohnBurke
I've flown with newly typed pilots with zero prior turbojet experience in various aircraft who performed flawlessly. None of them were high time.
The military has a nasty habit of putting very young, very inexperienced pilots in some of the most expensive and highest performance turbojet aircraft that the world has to offer, loading them down with more firepower than the sum total of the second world war, and sending them into combat. Somehow, they manage.
The military has standards for admission, and then more standards along the way. You will get little, sometimes zero, remedial training. The military finds those with raw talent and then develops it.
In the civilian world you can keep trying until you run out persistence or money...some folks have more of that than they have innate ability. There are of course exceptional civilian pilots...but they don't have to be.
Also military flying is by no means as safe as civilian flying needs to be.