The government contracting a private military company, a PMC that is largely made up of 18 year olds who are fresh out of school, under immense crippling debt that they will likely never pay off, in order to send them off to liberate newly enemy occupied territories that have been seized from the state?
Morality is a spook or something.
i dont think they have crippling debt, if it's anything like the US military they were probably pretty posh to begin with: since piloting has a high barrier of entry, then pilots are usually people who come from well-off families who can afford to dedicate themselves to the entire process. so it is kind of an "art-imitates-life" thing – fox withdrew from corneria's army and even convinced slippy to do so as well, to start his own career in the private market, which is kind of what happens in the US: fighter jet pilots are extremely scarce because they often leave for PMCs or commercial airlines (which strained the US bombing operations in iran). this scarcity seems to be the case for corneria's army as well, since general pepper is desperate to fill in the ranks with extremely expensive mercenaries. if anything fox is a ruthless businessman, deliberately mooching off corneria's army after receiving training from them, and then double dipping by charging them for the favor of filling in corneria's ranks, fully knowing that corneria's defense army is lacking in fighter pilots. if pepper wasn't an imbecile, he would lock his ass up and then make it punishable to defect from the army.