Bush Goes to War to Back Defense Costs : Politics: The President views a mock battle at Ft. Irwin. His three-day trip is part of his fight to defend military expenditures.

On a day when he praised Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev for moving toward democracy and pluralism and when senior Administration officials discussed the imminence of German reunification, President Bush on Tuesday flew 2,340 miles to California to view U.S. soldiers simulating a Red Army surprise attack across the German frontier.

White House officials denied that there was anything incongruous about the timing of the visit to this Mojave Desert war game center, the first stop in a trip that later in the day took Bush to Los Angeles for a state Republican fund-raising dinner.

The President himself told troops here that despite plans to greatly scale back forces in Europe, America must remain “prepared to fight.”

“Events in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union have changed our strategic defense posture,” Bush told the soldiers, who paused in their simulated war between the United States and “Krasnovia” to listen to him over a radio hookup.

“We are pleased to see Chairman Gorbachev’s proposals to expand steps to political pluralism in the Soviet Union,” Bush told the troops. “America will always welcome measures that will promote the growth of democracy, and it is especially encouraging to see anything that might bring the day of true democracy a bit closer for the Soviet people.

“But it is important not to let these encouraging changes, political or military, lull us into a sense of complacency,” he added. “Nor can we let down our guard.

“God Bless our country,” he told them. “And now, back to war.”

The war did not take long. By the time Bush, dressed in a camouflage jacket, pinstripe blue trousers and black wing tips, reached his Hill 781 observation post, the red team was rapidly pushing through the defenses set up by a visiting battalion from Ft. Lewis in Washington state.

Fighter-bombers dropping flares screamed out of the pale desert sky, and U.S. Army vehicles made up to look like Soviet T-72 tanks led columns of attackers past the Valley of Death and through gaps in the defense perimeter.

The outcome was expected. Visiting troops, who come here for 20-day training exercises, often have their first exposure to actual battlefield conditions under the Mojave Desert sun.

The “opposition force,” by contrast, is based here at the fort, about 1,000 square miles of desert ridges and valleys located northeast of Barstow. The red team units, which use Soviet tactics and vehicles made to look like Soviet equipment, are designed to be “a world-class opponent,” Lt. Col. Michael Ryan, chief of plans and operations for the battlefield, told reporters.

Designed, according to Army literature, to “replicate in numbers and types of equipment what might be expected in a European conflict,” the training center, like the Army it serves, now faces a major period of readjustment.

Bush’s senior defense and foreign policy advisers now say there is little chance of the sort of battle the center was designed to train troops for--a massed-armor Soviet attack on NATO forces in Central European.

And for now, it is a different kind of battle that defense officials have in mind--the coming battle in Congress over attempts to reduce Bush’s $306-billion military budget request.

That battle is the chief focus of Bush’s three-day trip, which will take him to the Lawrence Livermore laboratories today for a briefing on “Star Wars” strategic defense research, then on to San Francisco for a defense policy speech. Thursday, Bush will tour the Strategic Air Command’s center at Offut Air Force Base outside Omaha.

The purpose, according to Bush’s spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, is to focus attention on the Administration’s view of the continuing need for a high level of defense expenditures. Already, congressional Democrats have been pushing for deep cuts in Bush’s defense numbers--both in funds Bush has requested for building additional nuclear missiles and money used to keep troops in Europe.

The Army, at the same time, has begun looking for ways to emphasize uses for the training center here other than preparations for World War III.

The red team “is not necessarily Soviet,” Lt. Col. Ryan noted, “at least 30 nations in the world use Soviet equipment and have been trained by Soviet advisers.”

Both Bush and army officials were quick to note that some of the troops involved in the recent invasion of Panama trained here, although there was little direct connection between the sorts of weapons and tactics used here and those employed in that mission.

And in the future, Ryan said, the Army is likely to emphasize training of smaller, mobile units, rather than the large armored battalions that traditionally have come here.