When the highlight of your mission is the landing, you are easily challenged. Hah! ;-).
T-38 and the F-15E have AOA gauges but like I said, flying without an AOA gauge means you rely on your training and experience—does it look and feel right? You pilot the jet.
You are a pilot, not a switchology master.
OK, True Story: When I was a primary jet instructor at NAS Meridian in the mid 1980s I had a total pitot static system failure. It was at night in the goo and we had just leveled off at FL240 returning from Pensacola back to Meridian. I had a new instructor pilot with me and I was playing the part of the student. When I started to level off the VSI and altimeter kept climbing and the student IP thought I was messing with him. He said “watch your altitude.” I replied something not right, the power is at idle and I've got 5 degrees nose down, but we're still climbing. About that time the altimeter, VSI and airspeed froze up. Only took a few seconds to diagnose the problem, but now we're in the clouds at night with no airspeed or altitude indicators. Of course I declared an emergency and told Center that I didn't know what altitude I was at, but was descending to VFR conditions and to clear a path in front of me. Interesting side note is that Center thought we were still at FL240 because the altimeter was locked at that altitude and was sending the false information to the IFF transponder. We had entered the clouds at 15,000 feet and that was the forecast minimum ceiling enroute to Meridian. So I pulled power to idle and lowered to nose to about 3 degrees nose down for a controlled descent. Sure enought we broke out at about 15,000 feet and I declared VFR for the remainder of the trip to Meridian. If the clouds had been much below a 5,000’ ceiling then ejection might have been our only option.
I also knew that once I dropped gear and flaps that the landing AOA system would engage and would provide airspeed control (based on the optimum AOA for landing). Then I just had acquire the Optical Glideslope System (the “Ball”) and fly it to ground. All worked as planned and troubleshooting revealed that the pitot system heater had failed so the system had literally frozen up once we entered the clouds.
Why the long story? The point is that we overcame extreme unexpected adversity by knowing the airplane, knowing procedures, remained calm and quickly came to the correct solution. My three years as an instructor pilot made me an immeasurably better pilot because they were long hard intense days (usually scheduled for 3 flights/ 12 hour days. And if you didn't have the attitude that this student is trying to kill me in some new way that I haven't seen before, then chances are - he would.
Most of the new young airline pilots don't have anywhere near the training and experience that you and I received from our military flying. It's friggin scary when I have to get on a commuter plane and look at the young kids who are the pilots. I just thank God that I'm a Christian and say a quick prayer.