Soviets Announce 8% Cut in Military Spending

The Soviet Union said Friday that it will reduce its military spending by more than 8% next year, and gave the most detailed description to date of its armed forces.

Col. Gen. Nikolai Chervov told a news conference that cutting the military budget 8.2%, to $115 billion, was part of a program of shifting Soviet armed forces from an offensive posture to a more defensive role.

As of January, 1990, Soviet military forces will number 3,993,000, he said. He did not specify what categories of personnel the total includes.

“The new political thinking in defense doctrines allowed the military to reduce the budget in practical terms,” said Chervov, who heads a general staff department.

It was the first time the Soviet military budget was disclosed to foreign journalists before its publication in the official press.

Military spending this year amounted to $129 billion, according to the first full accounting of such expenditures, released in June.

Soviet forces beginning Jan. 1 will be equipped with 4,045 missile launchers of all kinds, 10,000 missile warheads, 63,900 tanks, 8,207 combat aircraft and 157 major surface ships, according to the breakdown.

Chervov said the number of offensive weapons is being reduced, operational training is being revised and that major military maneuvers had been scaled back.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has already begun trimming the armed forces in the hope of easing international tensions and freeing funds needed to help modernize the Soviet economy.

“We were guided by (Gorbachev’s policy of) openness. The (budget) cuts are one way of building confidence,” Chervov said.

A year ago, Gorbachev told the United Nations that 500,000 troops would be cut. Chervov said that 256,000 of them had already gone.

The 1989 U.S. military budget totaled $300 billion, but the Soviets say that the low wages paid their conscripts--equivalent to about $12 a month--partly explains the discrepancy between the two superpowers’ spending.

Col. Gen. Vladimir Babev, who also attended the news conference, said the budget figures do not include the cost of converting military factories to civilian production, an important part of Gorbachev’s plan for the economy.

“The budget should make it possible for the state to maintain reasonable military sufficiency and also improve living conditions for the army,” Chervov said.