U.S. Assessing Impact on Soviet Military : Defense: Daily operations seem unchanged, but shifts and cutbacks may be ahead.

U.S. military intelligence analysts are scrambling to keep up with the upheaval in Moscow, sorting through a deluge of information to try to discern the shape of the military force that will emerge from the political changes in the Kremlin.

The Defense Intelligence Agency has established an around-the-clock task force to monitor military developments in the splintering Soviet Union, while the Navy has assigned extra people and intelligence-gathering assets to watch for changes in Soviet naval deployments.

Despite the effort, one Navy intelligence specialist acknowledged, “We’re confused. The one recurring theme is that very little has changed in the daily pattern of operations of the Soviet navy. They’re going about their business.”

A Soviet electronic intelligence trawler, for example, is still prowling off the U.S. East Coast, as it was before the failed coup. Soviet ballistic-missile submarines are still at sea, with their nuclear-tipped missiles still aimed at the United States, officials said. Soviet shipyards and weapons factories continue turning out arms at the pre-coup pace.

And while Soviet generals ordered some of the country’s land-based mobile intercontinental missiles returned to their garages during the coup as a signal of reassurance, they are still capable of launching them on short notice.

While day-to-day Soviet military operations continue virtually unchanged, the turmoil in the Soviet Union has presented a host of intriguing questions for U.S. military analysts:

* When, if ever, will the Soviets begin in earnest a promised conversion of defense factories to civilian production? Will projects now under way--including three new aircraft carriers and several nuclear-powered attack submarines--be completed?

* What will become of the KGB’s Maritime Border Guard, a separate 320-ship navy that has never been under control of the regular Soviet navy?

* Will the independent Baltics allow the Soviet fleet to operate out of its ports, or will all those docks and repair facilities have to be replicated on Russian soil?

Scores of other questions remain unanswered, from the ultimate size of the Soviet armed forces to the defense arrangements that are yet to be negotiated between the center and the republics. Until some of those issues come into focus, U.S. officials say, the Pentagon will not undertake any radical revision in American military operations or long-range planning.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said Saturday that he intends to invite his Kremlin counterpart, Defense Minister Yevgeny I. Shaposhnikov, to the United States in the near future for “serious discussions” about military issues.

Cheney said he looks forward to working with a “new generation of leadership” in the Soviet armed forces, noting that the United States is ready to discuss possible reduction of short-range battlefield nuclear weapons in Europe.

But Cheney said in an interview on CNN’s “Newsmaker Saturday” that it would be “very premature” for the United States to make faster or deeper cuts in Pentagon spending beyond those already approved.

Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams says there is “an air of excitement and fascination that permeates the Pentagon. Anybody working with the military can’t help but be affected by the knowledge that they are working these questions at a time of the most fundamental change since 1917. But it’s a little, in a slow-motion kind of way, like watching the fifth or sixth hour of election returns: It’s too soon to tell what the outcome will be.

“So (U.S.) submarines are still doing their thing, soldiers are still marching and training, the Strategic Air Command boys come to work every day as usual and they’re still manning weapons that are tipped with nuclear warheads,” Williams added.

Even as the coup unfolded, for instance, the U.S. military continued its annual “Return of Forces to Germany,” or Reforger, exercise in Europe. The maneuvers, which involve the deployment of 6,700 troops from the United States to Germany and the Netherlands, began Aug. 19.

This year’s Reforger was half the size of last year’s exercise, not because of the dramatic events in the Soviet Union but because of budget cuts and German civilian opposition to the intrusive exercise. Much of the exercise is being carried out by computer simulation and confined to U.S. military bases.

The Navy, meanwhile, has stuck with plans to conduct “North Star,” a nine-day exercise in the North Atlantic starting Tuesday.

Times staff writer Melissa Healy contributed to this report.