"If Necessity is the mother of invention then surely War must be it's father"
I'm not sure if that's a real quote from someone. I thought I made it up in highschool but my teacher took points off my term paper for not citing the source. Regardless, it does seem like a great deal of our modern conveniences grew out of the war effort or originally had military applications.
I remember having a conversation with a friend once who was telling me about this brand new technology he had just read an article on and what it could do. I was able to engage in the conversation and even point out strengths and weaknesses in the tech and go into detail about how it all worked. He asked if I had read the article and I said No, but I had experience with that exact same technology a decade earlier when I was in the Army.