military iconoclast. As far as "greatest" military theoretician...eehhh maybe not so much IMHO.

He did not really come up with anything new to add to the theory of warfare, what he did was pointed out the inter-relationships and added to the never ending debate.

And the "so what" factor Wilf advanced shouldn't be taken as a smack down, he was expressing what many who are very well read in the military arts felt when looking into Boyd's briefing. Now certainly for many others it proved to be a sort of revelation; but to go back to the 6 year old analogy, if, for some reason, the kid is already fluent in calculus, when he takes the class his reaction will be 'so what I already know this stuff.' Not to smack anyone just to say 'check, got it, let's move on.'

I respect Boyd because he took on the system from the inside, he certainly played well to the dumb, cigar chomping, fighter pilot stereotype, which caused many to underestimate him. His genius lay in his ability to be a governmental guerrilla, an insider insurrectionary, a bureaucratic insurgent…and more metaphorical descriptions I can't match up right now.