SLF here. Interesting thread; hope I'm allowed a couple of observations.
Re: military flying. My late brother was ex-RAF and ended up left-hand-seat for Big Airways on long haul. Two things were clear during his training. One, that he could at any moment be thrown off the course and consigned to a desk job. Second, that it was dangerous. At the time (late 80s) it seemed like Hawks were plummeting into the North Sea on a weekly basis. He ended up reassigned to multis; after a three year tour on C-130 he got given a desk to fly and then left at the end of his 12 (or 8?) year sign-up. Point is, he might have ended up with no training at all.
Re: the future of aviation. If one asks "will there be fully autonomous pilot-less passenger airliners in a hundred years time?" then is anybody going to say "no"? The next question then is "when?".