A large portion, 23%, of military budget is paychecks, healthcare, retirement for veterans. Tons more counting employees of all the industries that make up the industry portion of the military-industrial complex.
A huge amount of the military budget is research and science.
> some breakthroughs that come from military research
rockets, jets, computers, encryption, RADAR, SONAR, internets, canning/food preservation, weather prediction - that's just things I know from being in tech (and knowing some history). I'm sure if I was a chemist, materials scientist, engineer, or doctor I'd be able to name tons more from those fields.
Those breakthroughs you mention, you think they wouldn't have been made if it wasn't for the military? Some of those things are also borderline not invented by the military at all, but lets disregard that for now.
>Those breakthroughs you mention, you think they wouldn't have been made if it wasn't for the military?
I don't think we'd have GPS (for example) without the military, among other things like nuclear energy/weapons and so on.
Do you seriously think a corporation would have invested the money creating everything needed from the ground up, including ongoing maintenance of a satellite constellation, to let people fix their location on the earth? Where's the profit/ROI in that?
> I don't think we'd have GPS (for example) without the military, among other things like nuclear energy/weapons and so on.
I think you are wrong. Nations that don’t have a military (e.g. Iceland and Costa Rica) still build entire systems of lighthouses, they chart the seas, they map their mountains etc. Countries spend a lot of money into civilian infrastructure. The ROI is in enriching local industry. A GPS system is no bigger ask for civilians then e.g. a railway network. In both cases the ROI is huge for local industry.
As for nuclear energy. A lot of the scientist working on the bomb later became a huge proponents of non-proliferation (J. R. Oppenheimer being a prominent example). I think it is safe to say that the same scientists would have been even happier to work on the technology even if the motive was entirely peaceful.
I believe you're misreading the breakdown - I read that as "23% of budget goes to personnel costs, which include paychecks (for active duty), healthcare (for military and their dependents until 26), and retirement for vets"
I fully believe that only 5% of the budget goes to Veterans Affairs, at least in the US. The system is not very good at taking care of vets/
>Those breakthroughs you mention, you think they wouldn't have been made if it wasn't for the military? Some of those things are also borderline not invented by the military at all, but lets disregard that for now.
* Rockets are an entirely military invention - the Hargrave rocket invented for the British Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars, the chinese pseudo-rockets used as artillery, the V2 rocket used in WW2 Germany, etc. I think one of the only non-military rocket scientists known to history is Goddard.
* Jets - also an entirely military invention. I'm assuming you mean "jet air craft" here - WW2 was the first use of jets to power an airplane. The Soviets and Americans quickly followed suit.
* Encryption - encryption has been in use in militaries since at least the roman era; another name for a substitution cypher is a "Ceaser Cypher." To be fair, this isn't exclusive to military use, as states have an interest in keeping their communications secure, as do banks, but in terms of "money invested in development of cryptography as we know it," the field was effectively invented whole hog during WW2 (again), as (military led and funded) analysis of how codes could be broken lead to the need for new encryption methods that were more secure. See also: the NSA. (note - I'm being sloppy with codes/cyphers/encryption here)
* RADAR/SONAR - literally developed during WW2 by the British using US funds in order to detect submarines and the Luftwaffe terror attacks. The germans had a very sophisticated RADAR tech at the beginning of the war (directed radar for night defense), but failed to develop it any further.
* Internets - the internet, as a system of interconnected computer networks, was funded by ARPA/DARPA, the DEFENSE Advanced Research Projects Agency. ARPA-net was first used by the Pentagon. Pretty much the entire US software and hardware industry was built off of US defense contracting, and this is no exception.
* Canning/Food preservation - the biggest advances in canning/food preservation were the result of studies/competitions funded by the British Royal Navy in the 18/19th centuries. The British defense industry funded the development of canned goods as we understand them today. Interestingly, this is where a lot of our understanding about vitamins started to be learned by (heavy) trial and error, as the RN tried to figure out how to combat scurvy.
* Weather prediction - meteorology as a science got tons of money from (you guessed it) the British Royal Navy, who understandable wanted to better predict conditions for their large navy that was made of wood and canvas. in the 20th century, meteorology got huge infusions of cash from the USAF, because planes care about weather and storms to a huge degree. This was a scientific field outside of the military, but even then, it was a matter of State security to predict the weather so you could understand crop growth patterns etc.
So, to answer your question, no, I don't believe any of those technologies would have developed organically.
> The world's first large-scale experimental rocket program was Opel-RAK under the leadership of Fritz von Opel and Max Valier, a collaborator of Oberth, during the late 1920s leading to the first manned rocket cars and rocket planes,
Looks like rockets were invented before a global war broke out with peaceful intentions, then the military used that invention for violence, as a global war broke out.
Just because an invention is used for war doesn’t mean it required one to be invented.
>Looks like rockets were invented before a global war broke out with peaceful intentions, then the military used that invention for violence, as a global war broke out.
This presupposes that the V2 is the first use of rocketry in history which...well, it's just not true. You conveniently skipped over the bit about Congreve rockets, which were invented in the late 18th/early 19th century, explicitly for war, or the growing evidence about the use of gunpowder rocketry in Imperial China. Both of these uses were explicitly NOT peaceful. (not hargreve, I misremembered in the OP post).
Also, if you bother to read the article you referenced, it makes it clear that literally nothing came of the experiments apart from that book. It took a war to get the funding and manufacturing resources available to actually _do the work_ of advancing rocketry.
EDIT: to sound less like an asshole and engage with the comment on its face value.
Technological inventions connect like a web. There is a reason James Burke named his show “Connections”. We can move the goal post for any given invention wherever we like, really. If V-2 wasn’t invented for the military, then we can simply move the goalpost such that we mean another type of rocket, but make sure not to move it sideways such that the invention could be used as a transport propellant or for signalling.
But I wish to step aside now and acknowledge how silly this whole argument is—as most arguments are when it comes to alternate history. Historically the military has been the most well funded of all government enterprises so it should come as no surprise that many innovations happen under such well funded programs. But that does not mean that is the only possible outcome. Humans kept innovating and inventing even as funds were diverted to non-violent endeavors. Today we have universities which are well funded and engage in research, often handing out their gathered knowledge to the rest of humanity (James Webb space telescope can attest to this). Who know what we would have invented already if it wasn’t for the military taking most of the attention of historic societies?
You can’t really compare solid fuel rockets with liquid fueled rockets. And rockets fed by turbopumps (unlike the earlier pressure-fed models made by Goddard and others) are in a class of their own.
> rockets, jets, computers, encryption, RADAR, SONAR, internets, canning/food preservation, weather prediction - that's just things I know from being in tech (and knowing some history). I'm sure if I was a chemist, materials scientist, engineer, or doctor I'd be able to name tons more from those fields.
Half of those inventions come from other nations who dont need to spend 800bn a year (or whatever it is now) + however much the CIA makes from selling crack.
> + however much the CIA makes from selling crack.
That gave me a good chuckle.
Also, just because the military did them first, does not mean we wouldn't have created them. We might even have more inventions if we had a dedicated R&D team for America.
A huge amount of the military budget is research and science.
> some breakthroughs that come from military research
rockets, jets, computers, encryption, RADAR, SONAR, internets, canning/food preservation, weather prediction - that's just things I know from being in tech (and knowing some history). I'm sure if I was a chemist, materials scientist, engineer, or doctor I'd be able to name tons more from those fields.