Mitchell Hundred wrote:
With the first and second world war you saw developments in technology that would have taken years longer to develop if not for the rapid pace of development caused by large scale war.
If there were a 3rd world war a decade or 2 later would we have seen an accelerated pace of development in technology to OTL?
The caveat would be of course this war would not devolve into total nuclear armagedon which would probably set things back a bit.
Note that despite attempts to limit military technological growth between WWI and WWII the effort in general failed due to rather obvious progress outside of strict military necessity. Further you don't require a world-spanning war to progress though in general some form of conflict where various doctrines, procedures along with technological assumptions and ideas can be tried out helps a great deal.
More often than not the 'advance' of military technology is retarded by factors outside direct military control. For example ballistic missiles were actually quite obvious and admitted by most experts to be the next big weapons technology following WWII. What delayed this in the US was significant budget cuts post-war and the need to choose between programs which lead to a concentration on "known" technology, (manned bombers) and what experts thought was "near" and "long" term technology. It was thought that air-breathing cruise missiles could be brought to fruition within 10 years whereas ballistic missiles of the needed (intercontinental) capability would take longer than 10 years to develop and deploy.
So within the funding given bombers had the highest priority, defensive systems, (aircraft, radar, and AAA-weapons) next with air-breathing cruise missiles in a slow development and almost nothing left over for long range missile development. Then came Korea and both budget and priority changed. Somewhat. After that, once again the concept and priorities changed again to (supposedly) reflect the new paradigms but as usual the exact priorities were ever shifting. Behind in some areas, ahead in others.
High speed aircraft armed with cannons became less and less effective so the air-to-air guided missile was developed but research was driven by the agency with the most money rather than what was the best choice or opportunity. Hence the Falcon over the Sidewinder despite their large differences in performance, operations, and technology. It took a lot of use in low grade conflicts and testing to finally work out that the latter was in fact far superior to the former and why. Similarly the case of aircraft 'defensive' systems such as ECM were developed based very much on assumptions and vague information on the expected 'enemy' threat. So much so that once deployed against those threats even in the arguably 'sub-peer' conflict in Vietnam they were found almost useless and both new technology and new doctrine for their use had to be found.
The other issue is no "World War" after WWII is going to be a long drug out conflict in the manner of previous wars. Near total commitment and total war will be required and keep very much in mind that between 1947 and the late 50s specifically, and up to the very late 80s in general NO ONE was planning any conflict between the US and USSR that did NOT devolve at some point into nuclear conflict. The only "hope" in fact was to somehow keep it 'tactical' rather than 'strategic' but that was quite obviously a forlorn hope at best.
The bottom line is that the initial and later US policy to the early 60s was based mostly on massive retaliation in any conflict directly with the USSR. And that retaliation was fully projected to be the massive us of nuclear weapons both against front line units and Warsaw Pact infrastructure and civil areas. The reasoning was rather straight forward as there were always going to be insufficient "conventional" forces to oppose those of the WP without immediate and deep reserves which no NATO nation was willing to fund or support. So at best any 'war' would consist of NATO falling back and inflicting as much damage as possible while trying to delay the Soviet forces long enough to allow resupply and reinforcements from the Continental US to arrive. That was not even the 'plan' prior to the mid-to-late 60s mind you. Between about 1949 and around 1965 the 'plan' was any Soviet aggression in Europe would be met with full release of all tactical, short and intermediate range nuclear weapons available with a 'follow-up' launched by strategic nuclear forces immediately afterwards.
The rather obvious flaw in this plan is twofold; First as a policy NATO and the US would never strike first, secondly any "build-up" to do such a thing would have obvious indicators that would and could be pre-empted with Soviet counter responses.
I that kind of planning there is neither need for development or research as the whole 'war' will be over one way or another within weeks at the longest. You go to full production of what you have and you let the future take care of itself if you are still around to see it.
OTL's Cold War on the other hand kept research and development funded and supported the whole time even if it became rarer to field actual units due to rising costs. The low-scale conflicts and confrontations also allowed field testing of doctrine, operations, planning and equipment which was invaluable and fed directly back into that same research and development cycle.
There was continual development and refinement of technology during both WWI and WWII but in general all forces retained and used what they started with or was in advanced development prior to the conflict with few exceptions. Granted that in many cases those 'exceptions' would end up having larger than life effects but for the most part they can also not be positively tied to the reason the conflicts ended the way they did. They are still only 'contributing' factors.
The idea that "war accelerates technology" is a gross simplification of trends seen rather than actual fact. While conflict can accelerate technology in the sense that more funding and support is available for research and development this is most often applied to what is available and in production rather than significantly new technology that is not yet in production. Again examples exist which "prove the rule" by not obeying the rule but they are as noted 'exceptions'
Randy