There are some important points here; not least of which is that the airlines are rediscovering the fact that military training brings with it experience that, until recently, has been in short supply in the civilian training world. The advent of
Upset Training is the result of hard lessons learnt:
The concept of required upset training has been gaining momentum in the USA, spurred by the February 2009 loss-of-control accident of a Colgan Airways Bombardier Q400 in New York.
Moreover, several British airlines have realised that it's hard to expand their fleet by just pumping new, low-experienced pilots into the right hand seat and promoting their first officers to captaincy. You can, of course, do that to a certain extent, but overall experience levels drop very quickly if you do. The answer is to buy-in experience and the military is an easy option because they don't compete on pay and conditions at the top end of the scale.