They just "know things" like which basically free tweaks ought to be made as a result of knowledge gained from the assembly being in the field. They don't stand to gain from the product being crap. Most of the fixes are basically free BOM tweaks that don't really matter but provide incremental improvements/refinements if made and the cumulative nickels and dimes really do add up.

The paper pushers on both sides that will do many rounds in order to make that happen are the only people benefitting from the make-work here as does anyone who skims their existence off of the paper pushers.

From my experience there are very few BOM tweaks that don’t need a whole lot of validation, there’s no free lunch here

Either works. One lasts longer. The "wrong" one was chosen originally because the default assumption at the time was Fulda and not Fallujah.