[Kroem3r]

This seems like a myth to me. Radar? Rocket engines? Turing? Stealth bomber technology? Nuclear powered aircraft carriers? ICBMs? Stuff that was happening regardless of a war and stuff that was nearly useless.

Perhaps military first adopters are a net positive; like, the first buyers of a technology who will pay top dollar for working prototypes. But what on the original innovation side can you actually attribute?

[DougMerritt]

Long wavelength radar pre-dated WWII, but it was barely useful and required shore-mounted towers.

Short wave radar, as used on planes ever since, was developed as part of the war effort by the MIT Radiation Lab.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_Laboratory

Rocket engines were known before WWII (a thousand years ago in China, and efforts like Goddard in the early 20th C), but you can't disregard the Nazi Germany invention of the V2 just because of that; it was a big deal, not just a fleshing out of prototypes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket#World_War_II

"Development of stealth technology likely began in Germany during World War II"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_aircraft

Later stealth, and nuclear carriers, and ICBMs, were a result of the cold war. I don't see how it matters whether the war is hot or cold.

I'll grant you Turing (aside from crypto), not that anyone is claiming differently.

The Internet directly arose from the Arpanet, which was purely a DARPA (Department of Defense) project, and there are lots of other well known examples.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpanet

> stuff that was nearly useless.

Citation needed.

> But what on the original innovation side can you actually attribute?

Short wavelength radar is inarguable, regardless of whether cold wars count.