I'm not sure their reflexes are better. It's more like they're the master of the feel and minutia of the airplane. They're also masters of managing the energy of their airplane, constantly trading off between altitude and speed. John Boyd was a fantastic example of that. There's a fascinating biography of him, "Boyd".

https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...

Boyd's biography is a great read:

https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...

about a very unconventional man.

Anyone interested would enjoy reading about John Boyd, head of the Fighter Mafia:

https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...

This is addressed quite well in Robert Coram’s Excellent _Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War_ with the life shaping question:

“Do you want to be somebody, or do something?”

You will be a really big deal at FANG but you are not likely to do as interesting work as you would in a smaller mildly successful company.

https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_(military_strategi...

Check out this biography of Col Boyd (the OODA Loop guy): https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...

It's a total hagiography with some dubious historical claims, but a fun and interesting read nonetheless.

If you are interested in how the Pentagon, Air Force and Navy decides to fund and build aircraft, I highly recommend reading this book [1]. It's about the father of the A-10, F15 (sort of), F-16 and FA-18. Fascinating read about how the armed forces will completely ignore data on flight characteristics due to politics. (it's about the life of John Boyd, not just how aircraft a chosen but its covered quite a bit in the book)

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...

One of the cool things about the biography of John Boyd (http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/0316...) was the quoting from and parsing of his performance reviews in the US Air Force.

Robert Coram's biography of John Boyd is very good.

http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-The-Fighter-Pilot-Changed/dp/0316...

For anyone interested in learning more, the book 'Boyd' provides a lot of useful background information on

- why the F-35 is a total disaster - the Pentagon's intrinsic inability to make reasonable decisions

In a nutshell, this guy Boyd pioneered modern fighter jet design (and important general strategic theorems as well), but spent his career fighting crony-bureaucrats to get any of it adopted by the U.S. military

http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-The-Fighter-Pilot-Changed/dp/0316...

http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-The-Fighter-Pilot-Changed/dp/0316...