The Apollo missions brought us rechargeable hearing-aid batteries and quakeproof buildings. The European defense industry is now looking for its own ‘NASA moment’

Fly-by-wire technology, packaged food safety, the quakeproofing of buildings, and rechargeable hearing-aid batteries—the list of innovations linked to the Apollo missions is as long as it is eclectic.

NASA is so proud of the civilian applications of the technologies first invented to help put a human being on the moon, it has published its own dedicated web entry, “tech-transfer-spinoffs.” The European defense industry looks on in envy.

For decades, engineering, technical, and industrial processes first explored as methods of keeping nations safe or attacking enemies have also found their way into the civilian world.

Infrared cameras were developed by the British for anti-aircraft defense in the 1920s.

Annoyingly for the sector—often the butt of protests from those who wave placards—it is poor at publicizing such advances.

Or promoting greater understanding of how such defense to civilian transfers support wider economic growth.

The reasons why are easy to fathom.

Less than a century ago, Europe was a continent destroyed by conflict.

Until the 1990s, the Cold War threatened nuclear destruction over a political fault line that split Europe in half.

Defense spending—viewed by many as akin to Big Tobacco, only worse—is often controversial.

The atmosphere is changing.

With Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine and America no longer an ever-willing ally, the European defense industry is gaining new fans and significant amounts of investment.

Jobs are well paid, and often located in those areas most blighted by manufacturing decline.

Productivity levels can be as much as 25% above the national average, a healthy fillip to otherwise anemic economic growth figures.