Every year tens of billions of dollars is appropriated to develop advanced weapon systems. Since the end of the Cold War military researchers have turned their attention from weapons of mass destruction to a far more precise challenge of finding, tracking and killing individuals. Welcome to Stop. Rewind and a short history of modern weaponry. For more than a few millennia the best weaponry available depended on what size rock you picked up. Now humans can kill anyone from anywhere on the planet. Military technology has spearheaded many so-called advancements that are now taken for granted – from the internet and hypersonic planes, to spy satellites and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Stop. Rewind tonight explores breakthrough technologies that moved from the laboratory to the battlefield during the giant leap forward in technology from the mid-1980s to the beginning of the 21st century. The program reflects on what the 80s and 90s generations thought future weaponry would deliver and considers what we’ve ended up with. Using images shot over the past quarter century Stop. Rewind also showcases some of the more hilarious and often hapless ideas that fell by the wayside. Each weekly themed episode of Stop. Rewind shows the development of a tech industry, documenting how each latched onto new technology, materials, and designs to eventually become the common gadgets, goods and services we know today. After looking at Robots and High Tech Homes in the first two episodes, Stop. Rewind tonight looks at innovations that really were a preview into the weapons of the future.