---
title: "History of military technology"
chunk: 4/6
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_military_technology"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:05.083851+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

If World War I was the chemists' war, World War II was the physicists' war.  As with other total wars, it is difficult to draw a line between military funding and more spontaneous military-scientific collaboration during World War II.  Well before the Invasion of Poland, nationalism was a powerful force in the German physics community (see Deutsche Physik); the military mobilization of physicists was all but irresistible after the rise of National Socialism.  German and Allied investigations of the possibility of a nuclear bomb began in 1939 at the initiative of civilian scientists, but by 1942 the respective militaries were heavily involved.  The German nuclear energy project had two independent teams, a civilian-controlled team under Werner Heisenberg and a military-controlled led by Kurt Diebner; the latter was more explicitly aimed at producing a bomb (as opposed to a power reactor) and received much more funding from the Nazis, though neither was ultimately successful.
In the U.S., the Manhattan Project and other projects of the Office of Scientific Research and Development resulted in a much more extensive military-scientific venture, the scale of which dwarfed previous military-funded research projects.  Theoretical work by a number of British and American scientists resulted in significant optimism about the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction. As the physicists convinced military leaders of the potential of nuclear weapons, funding for actual development was ratcheted up rapidly.  A number of large laboratories were created across the United States for work on different aspects of the bomb, while many existing facilities were reoriented to bomb-related work; some were university-managed while others were government-run, but all were ultimately funded and directed by the military.  The May 1945 surrender of Germany, the original intended target for the bomb, did virtually nothing to slow the project's momentum.  After Japan's surrender immediately following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many scientists returned to academia or industry, but the Manhattan Project infrastructure was too large—and too effective—to be dismantled wholesale; it became the model for future military-scientific work, in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Other wartime physics research, particularly in rocketry and radar technology, was less significant in popular culture but much more significant for the outcome of the war.  German rocketry was driven by the pursuit of Wunderwaffen, resulting in the V-2 ballistic missile; the technology as well as the personal expertise of the German rocketry community was absorbed by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. rocket programs after the war, forming the basis of long-term military funded rocketry, ballistic missile, and later space research.  Rocket science was only beginning to make impact by the final years of the war.  German rockets created fear and destruction in London, but had only modest military significance, while air-to-ground rockets enhanced the power of American air strikes; jet aircraft also went into service by the end of the war.  Radar work before and during the war provided even more of an advantage for the Allies.  British physicists pioneered long-wave radar, developing an effective system for detecting incoming German air forces.  Work on potentially more precise short-wave radar was turned over to the U.S.; several thousand academic physicists and engineers not participating the Manhattan Project did radar work, particularly at MIT and Stanford, resulting in microwave radar systems that could resolve more detail in incoming flight formations.  Further refinement of microwave technology led to proximity fuzes, which greatly enhanced the ability of the U.S. Navy to defend against Japanese bombers.  Microwave production, detection and manipulation also formed the technical foundation to complement the institutional foundation of the Manhattan Project in much post-war defense research.

== American Cold War science ==
In the years immediately following World War II, the military was by far the most significant patron of university science research in the U.S., and the national labs also continued to flourish.  After two years in political limbo (but with work on nuclear power and bomb manufacture continuing apace) the Manhattan Project became a permanent arm of the government as the Atomic Energy Commission.  The Navy—inspired by the success of military-directed wartime research—created its own R&D organization, the Office of Naval Research, which would preside over an expanded long-term research program at Naval Research Laboratory as well as fund a variety of university-based research.  Military money following up the wartime radar research led to explosive growth in both electronics research and electronics manufacturing.  The Air Force became an independent service branch from the Army and established its own research and development system, and the Army followed suit (though it was less invested in academic science than the Navy or Air Force).  Meanwhile, the perceived communist menace of the Soviet Union caused tensions—and military budgets—to escalate rapidly.
The Department of Defense primarily funded what has been broadly described as “physical research,” but to reduce this to merely chemistry and physics is misleading.  Military patronage benefited a large number of fields, and in fact helped create a number of the modern scientific disciplines.  At Stanford and MIT, for example, electronics, aerospace engineering, nuclear physics, and materials science—all physics, broadly speaking—each developed in different directions, becoming increasingly independent of parent disciplines as they grew and pursued defense-related research agendas.  What began as interdepartmental laboratories became the centers for graduate teaching and research innovation thanks to the broad scope of defense funding.  The need to keep up with corporate technology research (which was receiving the lion's share of defense contracts) also prompted many science labs to establish close relationships with industry.