Great post by Bdger
Bottom line: Military flying is not just a flying job.
That said, where else can you fly fighters? I can try to describe a fighter pilots career but none of them are the same. It all depends. You want to reference some books but unfortunately none come to mind. Hopefully, 1 yr at pilot training, 6’ish months to learn to fly the fighter and then it’s off to an Ops tour. You will probably work 10 hours a day. Sometimes you will work longer because you had a great week and flew a lot. The paperwork is still there when you return. In two seat fighters, there are obviously more people to get the work done. Sometimes you will fly 3 times a week. When you are lucky and in surge ops, you may fly 3 times a day. That typically doesn’t occur often.
In the military there is a lot of other training that is required to make sure you are capable of doing your wartime job. There are exercises/training to make sure you can operate in a chemical environment, shoot a weapon (well), water survival, land survival, operating in a hostile environment, studying the enemy, knowing your own Combat Air Forces capabilities, types of weapons/missiles, etc.
Yes, there can be a lot of paperwork. Depending on your attitude and the leadership personalities it is offset by camaraderie and flying jets! Each person in the squadron will do an office job: scheduling, weapons, mission planning, safety, standards and evaluation, life support and multiple other leadership positions. Eventually you will have people working for you and write evaluations. This too will take time in your busy schedule. We take great pride on taking care of our people. Just like any job, you will work with all types of people and some will require more mentoring than others.
Again, if you are lucky, you will experience flying in many parts of the world and exercise your skills against other air forces…Singapore, Thai, Australian, Japanese, Korean, German, British, Dutch, French, Italian, Turkish, etc.
A fighter ops tour probably averages 500 hrs every 3 yrs and an instructor job at a training base probably more (unknown).
Kind of a long answer to say it depends. I work very long hours but love flying fighters.