Soviets Peddle Weapons to Firefighters, Researchers

Soviet arms makers are staging an export drive with a difference--selling tanks to fight forest fires and offering bits of scrapped missiles to members of the West German public.

They also brought a submarine to a trade fair now under way in Munich, where they hope to find buyers for military hardware adapted for peaceful uses.

Faced with military overproduction brought on by disarmament agreements and the end of the Cold War, Moscow is trying to transform much of its arms industry into industrial and consumer goods.

A showpiece at the six-day Conversion 90 fair, which began Friday, is a T-55 battle tank rebuilt as a fire engine for putting out forest blazes in difficult terrain.

Visitors on a tight budget can settle for bits of scrapped SS-12 missiles elegantly mounted in quartz, each with a certificate of authenticity.

“This exhibition is a world first,” the fair’s West German organizer, Werner Marzin, told reporters.

Vladimir Bukatov, leading exhibitors from about 300 Soviet enterprises, said most of the 1,200 items on show were already in production and could be delivered quickly.

On display was a small submarine promoted for use in underwater research and SS-23 missiles--without their nuclear warheads--to study the upper atmosphere.

For years, Kremlin leaders pumped money and expertise into building up a vast armaments industry at the expense of Soviet-made consumer products, most of which are not up to Western standards.

Bukatov told reporters he thought the items at the fair would be able to compete abroad.

“The armaments sectors involved should be a match for top Western technology,” he said. He added, however, that a main goal of the fair is to find Western help in modifying production facilities.

“Without Western help, conversion is a difficult business,” he said.

Soviet brochures at the fair estimate that 500,000 arms workers would be shifted to non-military production this year.

Some of them will continue in their same jobs, such as those working on military hovercraft, which are to be adapted to carry tourists on pleasure trips.