There is a flip side to that coin. We have had 5000+ hour airline pilots (regional types) come through our program. They are very good at things like instrument flying, very good voice comms, great on the radio, good CRM and generally above average SA. Yet when it comes time for the military flying stuff, forms, tac forms, night form, BFM, the boat, they are like everyone else, behind the power curve. Not to say they don't become good at it, the difference is, they are not used to doing that type of flying, it's different than anything civilian will ever do. One of my on wings almost didn't make it out of forms (section, division, baby tac) as he was a slow learner but had flown corporate for the last 5 years prior, over 2000 hours (he did make it btw, flying Super Hornets now!!!!). My point to all this is it's difficult to transition from one way of flying to another, depending.
When E2/C2 pilots came back through the IUT and went to the boat, they often had issues as the type of flying was not what they were used to (even though they had done it before in training). An E-2 driver can go to idle behind the boat and leave it there to come down off a high ball then add power in close and the motors instantly respond. DO NOT attempt that in a T-45A/C but they do as habits are difficult to break so E2/C2 IPs have the highest instructor DQ rate, even higher than the students at times. Another example is the pilots who did primarily BFM and watch them get into regular type flying, or when they did NATOPS checks, had difficulty but they could fly the plane in rudder shakers at 24 units over the top during a roller without departing. Different types of flying and I assure you, that type of flying is very difficult...keeping your SA, the other aircraft in sight, knowing your altitude, hard deck, etc, etc.
Breaking out at mins in a big airplane, in bad weather? Yeah, that has to be tough and scary no doubt, especially being the aircraft isn't quite that maneuverable. Try it at the boat, at night, bad wx, in an aircraft with poor instrument capabilities! But again, it's a different type of flying and types of flying that civilians will never see. Flying an approach down to mins in bad weather is something military pilots do see but it will be different doing it alone in an AV8B vice MD80. Difficult either way but carrying your habits over from one aircraft to the other can be an issue. I used to fly C-2's and thus carried up to 24 pax and yeah, you always wanted to grease that landing. One my favorite things to hear was I barely knew we landed (they were probably just being nice). At the boat, no getting around it, they knew when we trapped. We had to fly that pig around the boat like a jet too, we used to get pax sick all the time, I felt bad but we had to do what we had to do.
