I suggested that before....my 17-year old son could have mastered this “game” in six weeks and been a level-12 fighter pilot (his lingo for his newest game). You could have hired my kid for $1500 a month, all the Mountain Dew that he could drink, and pizza service at work. Instead of handing leather jackets and $80k a year to some college jock...we could have done this alot cheaper. I could recruit 50,000 kids in a matter of four weeks. They wouldn’t even mind moving 50 miles northwest of Vegas as their future home....and most would have had harden skills at absolute victory. They wouldn’t even have asked to wear a pilot suit...they would have been happy in casuals and flip-flops.
In my experience, very few pilots were jocks, especially in college. Some in high school. Even if they were jocks, they sure as heck weren't dumb ones. Many have technical degrees.
Still I agree, they are wasted on drones. Oh you'd want a few, the officers commanding the units should be flying the birds too. Somewhat like a guy I work with. He was a helicopter pilot, an officer even though most of the pilots in the units were warrant officers. The Air Force does much the same with AWACS back end crews, enlisted and some junior officers doing pretty the same jobs, but then going on to "higher functions". (That keeps changing though, not sure what the current practice is)