Tourist,
In today's military, even at war, the MAA and the threat of "illegal"activities would put paid to 95% of the times when people would be prepared to do such things. BOI's are rightly very critical, and the repercussions vast. Nobody now travels in helicopters in an unrestrained fashion (even them) even on operations.
We are clearly not talking about "total war" where the machine and crew are less important than the aim. The decision to load an aircraft above AUM for an OP still happens very very occasionally. The only time I am aware of the aircraft was grounded afterwards and shipped home for NDT and examination by the manufacturer.
I take your point about captaincy. Experience levels in the UK MOD for example are dropping rapidly. Ops in the sandy place are one thing (same day,same way tasking) broad and diverse experience is rare. When experience drops, supervision must increase if we cannot accept the repercussions of people "learning lessons"
I think you will find today's MOD terribly heavily regulated for that reason. In the latest CH-47 wire strike for example, the crew were allegedly flying lower than 100' in the transit. When questioned why, they were unaware (maybe) that flight below 50' for transit was only permitted in designated areas!!!
They had signed as read the Flying ORDER Book, but the reality is they all either we're not fully au fair with UK flying or just made a mistake. IMHO that is a first order skill for flying- understand the rules. A third order skill is contemplating them and applying them to a given situation. That third order of knowledge is hard to acquire. That's why people either act in ignorance or in flagrance.....leave the funky stuff to the third order guy/girl who considers carefully....with everyone...why it should happen, not the pilot who thinks "I'm just going to......."