...spending a few billion on hardening the steel on their tanks a bit further Tank armor is made from ceramics nowadays. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chobham_

...spending a few billion on hardening the steel on their tanks a bit further Tank armor is made from ceramics nowadays. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chobham_armour#Material http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chobham_armour#Material ...is there a reason to believe that the number of innovative/creative/breakthrough technologies being developed depends on the amount of money spent on research? Actually, there is. A surprising amount of what goes on in research is aimed at reducing the combinatorial complexity of big search spaces -- organic compounds that might be medically useful, or doping and annealing schedules that might make better semiconductor substrates, or porous materials that might be good anchors for nanotubes or nanowires. Computer scientists call this an "embarrassingly parallel" problem. The more researchers you have, the faster you get an inventory of possible routes forward, etc.