The issue of whether you have thought about the consequences of going to war will come up fairly early in the interview process. If you haven't thought it through carefully, you probably won't pass the interview. Simple as that.
As for the relative merits of civil versus RAF, they are very different careers and not directly comparable. As someone mentioned earlier, in the RAF your first responsibility is as an officer. That means you will have many tasks that would never fall to an airline pilot. Partly as a result, you will fly less than your airline colleagues. That flying will be regularly more challenging and much more risky than the airline job, and there will be few occasions when you could call the flying repetetive or dull - even in large multis. You will also, in the early years of your career, earn more than most of your civil colleagues. Yes, there will be some who make the RHS of a 737 with EZ by 26 years of age on £48k, but most will be on much, much less. As it happens, I took an £11k cut in pay when I left the RAF for Virgin!
There will be many here who can put the other side of the argument better than I, but I hope this is food for thought.
[This message has been edited by scroggs (edited 06 March 2001).]