Updated:Possibly because of your inexperience, you have left a critical factor out of your reasoning.
When the military has a very strong need and interest in a developing technology that looks like it might not be fully developed, or developed soon enough to meet the military's needs by the civilian developers, what it does is to very carefully choose the most promising company that's working on it and then provide a steady stream of money to that company for continued development. A prime example of that is Odis (a wholly owned subsidiary of Opel Solar, so information is liste on opelinc.com). The military had powerful and urgent needs for computer chips that could withstand very demanding environments (far beyond the needs of civilian chips): combat conditions, space, etc. Silicon chips were inherently incapable of working under such considitions but the new GaAs technology had great potential in that area. But the computer industry had a lot of money invested in silicon tech IP and didn't want to render that worthless by branching into a new area. So they put their money into squeezing the last few years out of silicon and largely ignored GaAs.
Only Odis (Opel Solar) was working on it. So for several decades the military has provided a steady stream of researach money: the result: Opel's POET (planar optical electronic technoly) GaAs chip is now being validated for release on the civilian market soon (and has been used by the military awhile already (for their uses they are willing to pay more for less economic small scale production). The POET/GaAs technology is far more powerful than silicon has any potential to be and will probably replace silicon with a few years. The military does many projects like this and many of them are hugely successful in civilian markets.
THe military has an outstanding track record for picking out the companies that will successfully complete development of important new technologies. (If you have any doubts in that area look up "DARPA". The internet you're using to read this is one result of that development!
So the military's interest in spider silk is hugely significant. It does not investigate such things unless it sees powerful need and potential.
PS Note that the military only funds projects when civilian industry is not already working effectively on them. It's purpose is only to see that vital needs are not neglected. It's purpose is not to finance all industry. So the lack of military funding does not mean anything. It investigated it because it saw a critical need but is not funding because it thinks that civilian industry is making good progress toward meeting that need.
My point is that the military's interest shows it considers there to be a real need for it.
Mojo is just completely out of his depth here.
