Soviets Cut Military Spending, Look Inward, Pentagon Finds

Soviet military spending and arms production fell last year, and the Kremlin leadership is developing a military strategy with more emphasis on defending the homeland and less on “external adventurism,” the Pentagon said today.

The Defense Department’s annual report on the Soviet military, “Soviet Military Power 1990,” described the Soviet Union as a nation so entangled in internal unrest that its military capabilities are hard to assess.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said U.S. intelligence analysts believe that Soviet military spending fell 4% to 5% last year and that the Soviets cut back on some arms output.

The most pronounced cuts in arms production were in ground forces materiel, the report said. Production of tanks, for example, was cut in half, to about 1,700 in 1989.

The Soviets produced strategic, or long-range, offensive missile systems in 1989 at about the same pace as the year before, the report said.

Although the Pentagon report stressed that the Soviets still possess a formidable arsenal of nuclear weapons capable of destroying the United States, the publication was filled with passages expressing hope for lasting change.

Pictures showed Soviet missiles being destroyed in accordance with the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and Soviet Bison long-range bombers with their tail sections severed, making them unusable.