When Military Met Civilian

Recently I saw this Discovery documentary on how the Hummer, a vehicle built for the US army, went on to become a commercial vehicle. They even made a stretch version of it. And even tried selling it to the ladies by making a more feminine version! Yeah, that’s the same vehicle that MS Dhoni bought for Rs 1 crore.

That episode made me remember how many US military inventions and discoveries have gone to have extensive civilian use. For peaceful purposes. And not just fuel guzzlers like the Hummer. I mean stuff like the Internet and satellite based navigation. Physics and cosmology were beneficiaries too (the US discovered gamma ray bursts while monitoring Soviet areas for signs of nuclear tests). Another area was cryptography, which is used in so many Internet based transactions.

And so no wonder now, when the US military spending is being cut (mostly due to the recession and America’s declining clout), many wonder whether it would also mean a decline in (unintended) innovations that are so useful in non-warfare contexts! After all, the Pentagon spends 12% of its budget on research and some of that research could potentially have a pretty big peaceful impact, like their effort to reduce energy costs.

I am curious whether the militaries of other countries too have come up with products and technologies that eventually moved into the civilian domain and had such big impacts?

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