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Gorbachev took a step toward streamlining the military last December, when he and President Reagan agreed to scrap all medium- and shorter-range nuclear missiles. The Soviet leader makes no secret of his hopes that continuing strategic arms talks and conventional-weapo ns negotiations will reduce the defense burden. To decrease East-West tensions further, Moscow and Washington have embarked on a series of unprecedented exchanges between their military leaders. Last month Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, the Soviet Chief of Staff, peered into the cockpit of a B-1B bomber and visited the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt during a six-day American tour. Carlucci on his four-day trip planned to board a missile ship in the Black Sea and inspect the new Blackjack bomber.
Gorbachev has begun to challenge the very pillars on which Soviet defense policy rests. Though he made no mention of the military in his speech to the party plenum last week, Gorbachev has made it clear that he wants the military to shift from an offensive to a defensive posture through such possible moves as withdrawing from forward positions in Eastern Europe. In place of its quest for superiority over the West in numbers of weapons and troops, Gorbachev is demanding that the armed forces make do with a "reasonable sufficiency." To assure success, Gorbachev has reshuffled the military high command and silenced opponents of reform. Last week Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, a key Gorbachev ally, called for the Supreme Soviet to supervise "all departments occupied with the military and military-industrial activity." Such control is now believed to rest with the Defense Council.
While moves to upgrade the military have been under way for a decade, Moscow has grown more desperate in recent years. "The acceleration of high technology in weapons threatens the whole Soviet concept of war with obsolescence," says Christopher Donnelly, director of Soviet studies at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. Every Soviet service has turned to technology in a faltering attempt to keep up. Though not always state of the art by Western standards, lasers, computers and satellite technology have been brought into the arsenal and forced officers and troops to deal with complex new weapons.
The results so far have been mixed. The Soviets and their Warsaw Pact allies hold a 2-to-1 advantage over the U.S. and NATO in numbers of tanks, for example. Yet Moscow's armored force includes large numbers of the undersized and underpowered T-55 and T-62 models. The new T-80 travels at a sluggish 40 m.p.h., but is equipped with a lethal 125-mm cannon and laser-guided fire control. One big advance is shields of "reactive" armor that explode on contact to deflect projectiles fired by all but the newest NATO tanks.
The Soviet surface navy, by contrast, continues to lag far behind Western fleets. High operating costs and wear and tear have forced Soviet ships to spend 85% of their time in port, compared with 66% for U.S. vessels. Moscow has severely curtailed Pacific-fleet activity since 1984. "There's no doubt that the Soviet navy is deploying markedly less," says Harlan Ullman, an expert on Moscow's fleet at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Signs support the thesis that they are changing their strategy."