But also custom ASICS are no longer necessary because things are so fast and military acquisitions are much slower than commercial development: the state of the art commercial tech state of the art will go through several iterations before a single military product is released so why chase the bleeding edge?

Unless they have really classified tech like a productively useful quantum computer or something, it’s just a better idea all around to use off the shelf or very slightly modified off the shelf parts. (Feature flags, extra testing, expanded environmental margins, etc, but not total redesigns)