Second, a considerable amount of money is dedicated to symbolic spending.
These expenditures are put toward bona fide military hardware, but these resources
often remain useless due to a lack of adequate training or a lack of upkeep. The point
of sophisticated weapons systems was at best a symbolic effort, a trend that is more
difficult in democracies. Democratic South Africa, for example, saw the government
become the subject of intense scrutiny following the purchase of submarines and
Swedish fighter jets, both of which acted to increase the prestige of the South
African Defense Force but had little connection to extant national security concerns.