He’ll Match Kremlin Marshal’s U.S. Bases Visit : Carlucci Ready for Soviet Military Tour

Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci, continuing a series of unprecedented top-level U.S.-Soviet military contacts, leaves Thursday for the Soviet Union, where he will meet with Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov and visit several military installations.

The trip marks the first official visit to Moscow by an American defense secretary and the first time a senior U.S. military official has had a personal look at Soviet troops and weapons in the field, Pentagon officials said. Carlucci expects to see the Soviets’ latest strategic bomber, the Blackjack, and sail with the Soviet navy on the Black Sea.

The purpose of the trip is to reduce tensions and give the superpowers a chance to discuss military doctrine, according to a senior Pentagon official.

“We don’t do this simply for cosmetic reasons,” the official said. “What we are looking for in these contacts is for the Soviet Union to have a better understanding of our defense capability so that they understand we are strong and that we intend to stand firm in defense of the United States and its allies.

“At the same time, we want them to see us as human beings and to understand that we have no aggressive intent with respect to the Soviet Union.”

The official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, said that Carlucci’s four-day trip to the Soviet Union is only one step in a long dialogue with the Soviets and said that slightly warmer relations do not mean that superpower competition has subsided.

“It’s a step-by-step process that really requires that we avoid notions of euphoria, or notions that somehow shaking of hands and appearing before the camera is a substitute for a stable military balance,” he said.

The Pentagon official also expressed annoyance at the Soviets for withholding details of Carlucci’s schedule until “the very last few minutes.”

Exchange of Visits

The trip is designed to match the recently completed visit to the United States of Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, the Soviet chief of staff. During his four-day visit, Akhromeyev sat in the cockpit of a B-1 bomber, watched flight operations from the deck of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt and observed live-fire Army combat exercises.

Carlucci will visit the Frunze General Staff Academy in Moscow, the Kubinka air base outside Moscow, the headquarters of the Tuman Division near Moscow and naval facilities at the Black Sea port of Sebastopol.

“Akhromeyev got a real feel for the flavor of U.S. military forces and their equipment. We would expect there would be the same quality of access (for Carlucci),” the briefing official said. “He (Akhromeyev) saw the real world, and what we’re looking for is the real world--not a rigid display or a Potemkin village.”

Carlucci will continue discussions he and Yazov began in March in Switzerland on promised changes in Soviet military doctrine. Soviet military theoreticians say the Soviets under General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev have adopted a defensive posture based on the concept of military “sufficiency.”

“Increasingly, we’re starting to see, even in public, a questioning of the Soviet military in ways we have not seen before,” the senior Pentagon official said. “If it’s sincere, it’s going to take time for us to see (substantive changes). It also means that the military threat to the West will not be altered in any significant way, except over a long period of time.

“We hope that takes place,” he said. “But we’re sort of from Missouri: Show us.”

Carlucci, accompanied by Assistant Defense Secretary Ronald F. Lehman, representatives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and State Department and a planeload of other officials, is scheduled to leave Thursday for Helsinki, Finland, where they will meet with President Mauno Koivisto and other officials before flying to Moscow on Monday.

After leaving the Soviet Union the following Thursday, Carlucci will visit Turkey.