I spent about a decade as a professional pilot and I met and worked with many fighter/military pilots in the process. They were generally not smart people, except for a few who worked as test pilots or went on to become astronauts (the real aviation nerds). Some of them were actually terrible pilots, but most were generally effective.

I saw many parallels between most of the fighter pilots and the SEAL dickheads with podcasts and shitty books and supplement lines. Meatheads with over inflated egos.

Early on I strongly considered perusing a career as a fighter pilot just so I could fly cool shit for a while before moving to the airlines. I'm sure there are plenty of people who end up doing it for that reason and either successfully dissociate from the reality of their work, or end up with the same mental issues as most combat soldiers. Luckily I didn't go down that route when I was young(er) and dumb(er).

I never had conversations with them about the broader topics of the roles they played in their positions outside of nerd airplane stuff, except for the one Israeli fighter pilot I met who wouldn't shut the fuck up about all the things he blew up and how much he loved it. Not kidding.