Dozy,
There is nothing emotive or knee-jerk in my reasoning. The simple reality is that aviation is unforgiving and 99.9% wont get it done on the day you need the other .01%. Military aviation training comes with a sustained and quantifiable loss rate. The bottom line is that real mission capability requires realistic training and that leads to fatalities.
"Old School" professional pilots tended to have a military pedigree and while that might entail other issues by and large they had a very well qualified "stick and rudder" skill set.
The philosophical move away from aviation skill set to a sophisticated software designed to minimize or eliminate "pilot error" has led to less and less qualified pilots overall IMO. Flying will always entail risk and anything that minimizes a pilots actual ability to handle that other .01% will eventually come into play. The moment that "automatics" went from being an aid to the pilot and became a replacement aviation went backward 50 years.