Allies Subsidize Soviet Buildup --Weinberger

Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, unveiling the results of an eight-month government study, said Wednesday that Kremlin intelligence agents have obtained such access to sophisticated Western technology that “we are subsidizing the military buildup of the Soviet Union.”

The study, directed by the CIA, asserts that an average of more than 5,000 Soviet military projects--from sonar to submarines, surface ships to jet fighters and missiles to missile defense systems--benefited from Western hardware and technical documents each year in the early 1980s.

And in the previous decade, the Soviets budgeted the equivalent of $1.4 billion annually “for purchases of one-of-a-kind Western hardware and documents,” it said.

Dilemma for West

The report brings to light the dilemma faced by the scientific and high-technology community in the West: The relatively open exchange of the results of advanced research may speed the movement toward practical uses, but such openness also limits the control Western governments can maintain over the information.

Weinberger said at a news conference that the Soviets have conducted a “massive global effort” to obtain technology and, citing the “sensitive,” declassified information in the report, he decried “Soviet legal and illegal activities in the United States.”

Officials complained that the Soviets--by carefully targeting specific data and projects, monitoring scientific conferences and seeking unclassified as well as classified material--have been able to shave years off their own weapons development programs.

However, they acknowledged that this has not been entirely a one-way street. Indeed, Richard N. Perle, assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, said that Washington has benefited from Soviet work in the 1970s on strategic defense--similar to the “Star Wars” program to develop a space-based missile defense.

Pentagon officials insisted that the timing of the release of the study was unrelated to the summit conference between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Geneva on Nov. 19-20.

“There was no desire to throw cold water on the summit,” Perle said. But, he added, there also was no reason “to suppress” the document until after the meeting.

The report contends that the Soviets focused on obtaining material on such sophisticated U.S. weapons as cruise missiles, F-15 fighters and air-to-air missiles, using the information to improve their own similar weapons.

“The Soviets estimated that by using documentation on the U.S. F-18 fighter, their aviation and radar industries saved some five years of development time” and the equivalent of $55 million in development costs, the report said. Pentagon officials refused to say how they obtained the Soviet estimates.

Similarly, Weinberger said, “the Soviets are advancing their military programs by several years” as a result of their access to such material. “What it really means,” he said, “is that we are subsidizing the military buildup of the Soviet Union and the costs have been staggering.”

He said that of the 5,000 Soviet projects advanced each year by Western technology, research stages were eliminated entirely or significantly shortened in 27%; refinements or directions were shifted in 2%; new projects were started in 5%, and technical levels were raised in the remaining 66%.

Variety of Positions

The report said that the Soviet effort is run by the Military Industrial Commission, which coordinates both Soviet weapons development and acquisition of Western technology. The commission, it said, employs agents of the KGB intelligence service, the GRU military intelligence agency and other Warsaw Pact nations’ intelligence units, who are dispatched to the West in a variety of official and undercover positions.

One of the Administration’s targets in stemming the flow will be what Stephen D. Bryen, the deputy undersecretary of defense for trade security policy, called “sloppy handling of documents and blueprints” in the defense industry.

He said the Soviets have benefited from U.S. technology in developing microelectronic units crucial to computerized weapons; a sophisticated radar system known as “look down-shoot down,” which allows an airborne pilot to use his radar to fire weapons at an enemy plane below him, and submarine-detecting buoys hoisted from the ocean.

In addition, Perle singled out for criticism the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which he said “in the interests of science has an extremely liberal publication policy.”

Referring to the unique wing structure of an experimental aircraft developed with NASA funding, he said: “You can now find that wing structure in two places: the Smithsonian and flying on Soviet aircraft” with short landing and takeoff capabilities.

The study, to which 22 government agencies contributed, said that 60 U.S. universities were targeted by the Soviets over the past decade as sources of needed technology. They included Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, USC, Caltech and UC San Diego.