The Pentagon would rather burn billions and billions of taxpayer dollars on probable duds than iterate slowly on proven designs. Even after Boyd showed them conclusively how stupid that was.
The Pentagon is, for practical purposes, forbidden from iteration because that's not how their process is structured. This hellacious chart [0], (which I love pointing out), is the official diagram for the Pentagon's weapons purchasing process. This process matches requirements in federal law. In other words, this process is mandated by Congress.
How do you shoehorn iterative development into this? Where does it fit? It doesn't, so it doesn't happen.
I hardly think Boyd was the first guy to show them how dumb they can be.
The Pentagon would rather burn billions and billions of taxpayer dollars on probable duds than iterate slowly on proven designs. Even after Boyd showed them conclusively how stupid that was.