alt Hacker NewsAn interesting example, in my opinion:
In the US, we keep on manufacturing Abrahams tanks. We're not at war. We have no use for these tanks. So to make things make sense, we give money to some countries with the explicit restriction that they must spend that money on these tanks.
Why do we keep making them? Because you need people who, on day one of war, know how to build that tank. You can't spend months and months getting people up to speed - they need to be ready to go. So, in peacetime, we just have a bunch of people making tanks for "no reason".
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Why do we keep making them?
Didn't you answer your question in the above sentence? They are used to protect US foreign interests by sending them to allies. It's not because people will somehow forget how to make them. It's based off of an assembly line and blueprints. I don't see how this would be forgotten, any more than it would be possible for society to forget how to build a CRT TV just because they are not used anymore.
This is also why US shipbuilding is a dumpster fire: lack of a consistent order book for warships means they're more expensive to produce and the process is chaotic.
It's one of the great reasons to cultivate a collection of close allies who you support: it keeps your production lines warm and your workforce active and developing.