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[KerikBalm]

I think the cold war advanced tech even more

[wumpus]

6 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

I think the cold war advanced tech even more

It mostly did.  But I wasn't kidding about the commercial sector having to be almost completely isolated from US defense contracts.  And that by the end of the cold war, the "cold war" equipment couldn't compete with the "not hobbled by MIL-SPEC" gear made by commercial companies.  I'm also not sure of the real effects of splitting potential an entire generation of engineering talent between "military" and "commercial" domains.

Things like the blackbird were spectacular.  But don't forget the thing was made almost entirely out of unobtanium, and priced to match.  And there was always some cross fertilization between military and commercial: for one thing computers pretty much followed similar trajectories: DoD (and intelligence) funded supercomputers lead the way, then mainframes/mini computers followed a similar trajectory, followed by the microcomputer (although I'm not sure IBM ever noticed what was done outside of IBM).

MIL-SPEC was critically important in the creation of rugged gear.  But it also tore a nearly unpassable chasm between the commercial and military worlds.

[kerbiloid]

They can start selling commercial warheads, with limited yield.