I was playing a long single player game, trying to obtain multiple achievements in a single game. I'd just finished the 'build 100 squadrons of strikecraft' achievement, and decided that since the fleet upkeep was so much of a drain on my economy, that I'd scrap them and focus on econ for a bit. I hadn't realized at the time that fleet upkeep was directly tied to the fleet researches, and not the actual number of fleet points used.
In retrospect, the way it is makes sense - the drain on resources is attributed to the actual supplies that you're putting forth, rather than where the supplies are going (or in my case above, not going).
What would be better, I think, would be to be able to scale back fleet researches when you need to, so that you can save your economy. Say you lose a large fleet battle in a game ... it's economically devastating to have a huge chunk of your resources going forth to supply a fleet that no longer exists. Or, as my case above, you decide to change from a fleet-focus to something else (perhaps econ focus to support players), but can't. The way it is now simply locks players into fleet production.
Of course, undoing the research shouldn't have any further benefits, in my opinion - you don't get a refund for the research.
