Yes, exactly. I used to design tools to test these and we weren’t allowed to patent them, but I think some of the high level concepts were secret patents though I can’t know that.
For anyone wondering the thing ICBMs (and jet planes) use is called a gyroscope and gives the same output but it isn’t a “spinning top” gyro that you might be thinking of. Rather think super sensitive dynamo, or reversed motor. Tiny rotation turns into voltage signal.
There is an even newer type that uses laser but I don’t know anything about it.
WoodScientist@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Yeah, let’s voluntarily lower the quality of all of our lives simply to give some minute advantage in the geopolitical chess game.
Gladaed@feddit.org 7 hours ago
You would not use those in consumer tech. They are only useful for spaceflight. Which necessarily includes weapons.
WoodScientist@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
All technologies have military and civilian use. Just because you can’t think of a civilian application for precision gyroscope doesn’t mean others can’t. Precision surveying immediately comes to mind as a potential application, plus civilian inertial navigation devices.
And no, there is not some magical level of precision that only the military has use for. If something has military applications, it also has civilian ones. Hell, there are potential peaceful applications of nuclear bombs. If those can be a dual-use technology, anything can be.