AD-You were doing great for the first sentence. I agree with the sentiment expressed there, and I expected you to go on about the present generation brought up on GPS and automatics, the so called "sons of the magenta line."
Then you went on to equate the experience of old with being ex-military, be it fast jet or heavies. That isn't the case nor has it ever been. The "old farts" (and I am fast becoming one) were a mix of military and civilian in almost every airline. You don't have to be ex-military to have good manual flying skills or a good scan. I taught stalls and spins and spent some time beyond 60 degrees of bank without ever having flown in the military. I hand flew DC-8s raw data almost all the time and was comfortable doing so, down to minimums. My dad taught me to fly in the days before GPS and I can read a chart and navigate by dead reckoning. I could do unusual attitude recoveries from under the hood on a partial panel and I taught the same. When I checked out on the DC-8 we had to be able to determine a two engine ETP for oceanic flight using an E6B.
I fully agree that the experience level of the present civilian generation is not the same. In the past on the civilian side we started by instructing, flew single pilot night freight in light twins in all sorts of weather (nobody to make decisions for you), worked our way through regional turboprop airlines (sometimes six or more approaches to mins a day), then moved on to the major airlines. Its not that way anymore. Now even in the smallest airplane a computer/gps tells you where you are and where to go, and autopilots have become very common. No more "steam gauges" to build a scan, its all EFIS.
But you don't have to be ex-military to have the ability to fly an airplane without an autopilot and to have experience. There are plenty available if we offered a package to attract them.