The Large Hadron Collider and the International Space Stations are amazing wonders. It used to be that humanity's most expensive projects were religious temples. Now it's machines for scientific research. Some people apparently have a problem with this, and they're generally not the sort of people I like to be around.
Warfare science is still science and often has the benefit of funding groups that develop civilian science as well. Civie science doesn’t pay as well as the brass do