If you think industrial production isn't invested in during war you should fresh up on any modern war since WW1.
What we know is that military budgets SOAR (duh!), but what about washing machines? Transistors? Ballpoint pens? Antibiotics? The gazillion peace time inventions?
There's no part of me that can actually believe that you can ship off hundreds of thousands of folks off to war, you switch 10-20-40% of your economy to make bullets, and somehow research overall still comes ahead, it makes no sense. Let alone those cases where you country is physically under attack (which is most wars, not every country is as privileged as the US, to never have had a foreign power invade it at any serious scale in the last 200 years).
Research is more concentrated during war time, and more visible, frequently. But does war time research actually outpace peace time research? I don't believe that.
Just go on wikipedia and look up global production nimbers of war related stuff between 1939 and 1945 for increased industrial output.
Yes, war related stuff goes up during wars. What about non-war related stuff?
What about peaceful explosions of the global economy and trade? My point is that those most likely surpass wartime growth.
Peacetime economic growth > wartime economic growth.
Peacetime research > wartime research.
As far as research is concerned, without any numbers, I'd assume the focus shifts from civilian research to defence research. As does production. If it surpasses peace time production depends on the scale of the war. That output so should be measured in production units, war has the habbit of screwing up economic metrics.
After all every country's GDP is much higher than its military spending and for sure non-military research dwarfs military research.
This whole hypothesis seems unsound. It would mean that all civilian research is somehow much, much worse per dollar than military research. I highly doubt that.
Here, let me refresh your memory with the original trope:
> And war has historically been the impetus for much technological investment.
Yes, war also brings innovation. The only question worth answering as a follow up, is, does it bring more than peace?
Because otherwise it makes no sense glorifying war, which this line of thinking is fundamentally about.