The one thing I’ll add for the sake of the OP is that I like to say that the things that are unique to military flying are in addition to what you do in civilian flying, not instead of it.
For example, in real life, F/A-18s in the US Navy like what you’re flying here operate mainly out of NAS Lemoore or NAS Oceana (or for CVW-5 the squadrons at MCAS Iwakuni, Japan), with some smaller numbers in places like NAS Fallon, NAS Patuxent River, and NAWS China Lake, and to my understanding none of these places are really modeled in DCS. When assigned to a fleet squadron, you spend several months on deployment on the carrier (and probably get deployed twice in a 3-year tour) but spend most of your time operating in places near your home field and need to know the area around them and fly the departures and approaches into them and various divert fields in the area, as well as getting on and off the low-level routes, weapons ranges, and other special-use airspace you’ll train in regularly. While DCS is definitely better at modeling the tactical systems (though they only have legacy Hornets and not Super Hornets for the time being), to get a full idea of what military flying is about, you still have to be as comfortable flying the Rhino around in FAA-controlled airspace in CONUS (or I guess in Japan), with all the rules and procedures involved, as you would be flying in a combat zone.
If you want a challenge to try to start out with that’s not too far from you, I suggest trying to plan and fly the full Sidewinder low-level (one of the Top Gun challenges is just from the first point to the second point (from Lake Isabella to the Needles)). The Jedi Transition, if you want to use that option, goes through the “Star Wars Canyon” and skips from point C1 to point J (from SIDEWINDER LOW LEVEL SOP REV (4).pdf (af.mil)):
