They also want to keep up the fiction that "high tech" weapons which don't work in real combat are worth more and more for less and less cost (ie: less combat effectiveness vs. only useful for killing civilians and "goatherder armies"). It's one of those contractions of Capitalism, how to have a strongly armed empire, but allow the elites to keep boosting their profit. At stasis, either one shrinks the capital through buy backs or one has to grow the margin. Nothing is more profitable than selling something that isn't even manufactured, and once on that path, the only thing left to keep growing is to grow the fraud.
They also want to keep up the fiction that "high tech" weapons which don't work in real combat are worth more and more for less and less cost (ie: less combat effectiveness vs. only useful for killing civilians and "goatherder armies"). It's one of those contractions of Capitalism, how to have a strongly armed empire, but allow the elites to keep boosting their profit. At stasis, either one shrinks the capital through buy backs or one has to grow the margin. Nothing is more profitable than selling something that isn't even manufactured, and once on that path, the only thing left to keep growing is to grow the fraud.