COLUMN ONE : Cold War Still Lurks Offstage : Planes and satellites spy on the ex-Soviet Union. Submarines prowl off its coast. The Pentagon argues for vigilance but risks stoking Russian fears.

For the pilots of the 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing in Alaska, the scrimmaging for the big battle hasn’t ended and the rituals of the Cold War haven’t changed. Only the opposing team doesn’t show up as often.

It’s been two months since the Klaxons sounded at a 3rd Wing outpost 350 miles northwest of Anchorage, sending the unit’s F-15s scrambling into the air to give chase to Soviet bombers approaching U.S. air space. But the pilots of this North American air defense unit continue to pull alert duty in case Russia suddenly finds the political will--and the jet fuel--to resume its bomber flights off the U.S. West Coast.

For the crew members of the U.S. attack submarine Baton Rouge, old habits die hard, too. On Feb. 11, the Baton Rouge decided in the course of a routine mission to take the game to the other team’s back yard. The result was an underwater collision that, for a moment at least, roiled relations between the United States and Russia.

Just off Murmansk--home of the once-mighty Soviet Northern Fleet--an attack submarine of the former Soviet Union bumped into the Baton Rouge as the American sub glided silently off the Russian coast, eavesdropping on communications traffic onshore.

A startled Russia cried foul, alleging an American intrusion into its territorial waters--a charge disputed by the United States. But the jolt awakened many Americans to an apparent anachronism of the new world order: More than two years after the Berlin Wall was breached and two months after the Soviet Union dissolved, many of the military activities spawned by four decades of Cold War remain essentially unchanged, proceeding almost as if on autopilot.

“It appears that there was no malice intended here, but it was a good example of business as usual at a time when the political environment is anything but business as usual,” says Benjamin Lambeth, a strategic analyst with RAND Corp. in Santa Monica.

Indeed, the Baton Rouge is hardly alone in its efforts to spy on America’s newest friends. American reconnaissance aircraft still patrol the borders of the former Soviet Union, and U.S. satellites still peer down on Russia and the other republics, experts say. Meanwhile, nuclear missile and fighter aircraft units, as well as Navy warships around the world, remain on alert in case the new era suddenly turns sour.

The American practices and procedures continue, even though the military operations of the Commonwealth of Independent States have virtually ground to a halt.

Analysts differ over the reasons for the standing down of the former Soviet forces. Some cutbacks clearly are high-level decisions intended to send a new political message of friendship to the United States; other operations have been discontinued because shortages of food, supplies and fuel have made military forays impossible.

The results, however, are clear. It has been more than two years since a Soviet sub has patrolled off the American coast, and now, experts say, only a handful of Commonwealth subs patrol in waters close to their Russian ports. Virtually the entire surface fleet is tied up at its piers, and the last of the spy ships stationed off U.S. coasts went home in January.

Most of the Russian air force has been grounded, just one Commonwealth missile test has occurred so far this year, and the bulk of the Commonwealth’s nuclear weapons have been disabled, Western experts say. The training of ground troops has basically ceased as military leaders scramble to find food and housing, debate loyalty oaths and reorganize themselves as republic defense forces.

For years, Pentagon officials cited the aggressive cast and pace of Soviet operations to help justify their training policies and plans. Yet, even though a state of near paralysis seems to have set in among the ex-Soviet forces, many of the U.S. practices continue.

When news of the sub collision became public early last week, Secretary of States James A. Baker III was in Moscow. Ironically, his diplomatic agenda included the establishment of a joint U.S.-Russian effort to share early warning of ballistic missile launches.

“It seems a little strange that you can talk about setting up a system to share the product of our billion-dollar satellites with the Russians at the same time that you’re sneaking into their harbors to tap into their communications system,” says Bruce Blair of the Brookings Institution, an expert in the management of nuclear crises. “It doesn’t sound like compatible behavior. It’s weird.”

It’s not weird to Baker’s fellow Cabinet officer, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.

“It’s an important part of our security, and I don’t have any reason to believe there’s any fundamental problem here that requires any change in our policies,” an unrepentant Cheney says of the Baton Rouge’s activities.

Indeed, defense officials contend that, even if the vestiges of Soviet military power are barely viable, they are still alive and could be at least partly resuscitated. And given the uncertain fate of reform efforts in the former Soviet Union, they add, it makes sense to remain vigilant, perhaps even to step up the gathering of intelligence.

Jeffrey Richelson, an authority on aerial and space intelligence gathering, says that U.S. reconnaissance aircraft and satellites continue to peer down on Soviet territory. Their missions may have changed somewhat; rather than monitor Soviet and Warsaw Pact troop movements and test air defenses, U.S. surveillance craft now listen to military communications for any sign of mutiny. Aircraft and satellites track nuclear weapons to ensure that they are being carefully monitored and stored.

But some of the missions are barely discernible from those undertaken during the most bitter days of the Cold War. Not far off of the eastern coast of Russia, for instance, specially equipped RC-135 electronic intelligence airplanes still fly eavesdropping missions, known by the code name Burning Wind, designed to intercept military communications from Russian naval and ground forces.

Other U.S. aircraft stand ready to monitor ballistic missile tests by the Commonwealth. The tests have become infrequent--only one has taken place so far this year, compared with 77 last year.

But the spy plane’s crews of 17 wait anyway at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska for American intelligence analysts to summon them to replay their Cold War roles along the Russian Kamchatka Peninsula, where the test missiles normally land.

Meanwhile, U-2 spy planes soar high above the peripheries of the former Soviet Union. In mid-January, a U-2 flying out of Japan crashed off the Korean Peninsula, a short hop for the high-flying plane from Vladivostok, the home of Russia’s Pacific Naval Fleet.

Even at American bases of the Strategic Air Command, although much has changed, the old vigilance still prevails.

B-52 and B-1 bombers have come off the ends of runways, where they once waited with engines warm and nuclear weapons primed for the call to initiate bombing runs over the Soviet Union. “Doomsday” command planes such as the EC-135 “Looking Glass,” which once circled the skies round-the-clock, now go aloft just long enough for crews to maintain proficiency.

And in recent months, almost half of the U.S. missile force has been rendered incapable of launchings.

But 550 U.S. nuclear missiles remain on alert--their highly trained crews ready to launch at a moment’s notice, night or day.

For many of those crews, the events of recent months have stirred a profound, unfamiliar sense of uncertainty, says one knowledgeable military official. Not only has their mission come under increasing question, their very jobs seem to be disappearing, the official says.

But at the launch control center of a 10-warhead “Peacekeeper” missile, 60 feet below ground in a windblown corner of Wyoming, little of that angst is evident among “Crew Sierra 221” of the 90th Missile Wing.

“The Soviet Union is certainly going through some tumultuous changes,” Capt. Richard L. Schoonmaker, commander of the two-man crew sitting alert at the “Papa” launch control center, says in a telephone interview. “But the bottom line is, they still maintain a vast nuclear arsenal. They know we’ve served as a deterrent factor. That mission is more important than ever, especially with the kind of changes going on and the instability.”

On Monday, Schoonmaker and his deputy, First Lt. Harold Taylor, Jr., went through the motions of a missile launch, culminating in the turning of two keys, at a specially designed simulator at F. E. Warren Air Force Base in southeastern Wyoming. The scene could have come straight out of a training film from the era when the Soviet Union was still excoriated as the “Evil Empire.”

“I’ve been trained to do a job, to be a missile crew member and an instructor,” says Taylor in an interview from his underground command post. “That job is definitely still vital as long as we have a direction to do it, as long as someone is still telling me it needs to be done.”

In Western Europe, what needs to be done may be somewhat unclear, but the end of the Cold War has not brought military operations there to a halt. Instead, it has prompted major efforts to scale back and shift the focus of U.S. training exercises away from the traditional threat of a Soviet-led invasion.

Still, each August and September, an exercise called “Return of Force to Europe”--or Reforger--brings thousands of American troops to Europe, where they maneuver with U.S. and European forces stationed there. Once designed to reinforce Europe quickly in response to a Soviet invasion, the Reforger exercises will continue in truncated form now that the threat has become less menacing.

Last August and September, before and after the failure of the attempted coup in the Soviet Union, the pared-down Reforger exercises went on, bringing 6,700 U.S.-based troops to train with 22,000 troops and 4,000 vehicles throughout the Netherlands and western Germany.

Meanwhile, U.S. B-52 bombers continue to crisscross the globe on exercises that once served as an opportunity for the behemoth aircraft to see, and be seen, by the Soviets’ far-flung military forces.

It may be simple inertia as much as anything that drives the American military services to continue such operations, according to several military experts. But that doesn’t mean the practice is devoid of potential dangers.

“It seems to me that some of this intrusive reconnaissance must fuel suspicion and provide grist for the hard-line factions in the former Soviet Union,” says Blair of the Brookings Institution.

A few encounters between the old rivals, however, have resulted in pleasant surprises.

In the days after the sub collision, the U.S. and Russian navies twice engaged in the kind of cooperative exercise that has been unknown in recent memory.

In one publicly acknowledged incident, a pair of Russian warships passed through the Bosporus straits into the Mediterranean Sea and encountered the guided missile frigate Simpson. In Cold War days, the event would have been the occasion for both ships to steer broad courses around each other in a correct but chilly minuet.

But for the U.S. Navy, the Russian ships’ unusual foray into open waters became instead the occasion for a “passing exercise”--a polite exchange of radio communications and a raising of semaphores--that would never have taken place during the Cold War.

Defense officials said privately that an even more startling military milestone was passed several days later, when a U.S. Navy sub-hunting aircraft exchanged radio messages with a Russian Kilo-class attack submarine.

In earlier days, the Russian submarine would have dived quickly to elude the P-3 Orion aircraft. The Navy plane, in turn, would have dropped sonar buoys and used its electronic tracking gear to pursue the submarine.

Instead, in a break from precedent, the hunter communicated a radio message directly to the quarry. Like an old fighter hailing the return of his favorite sparring partner to the ring, the Orion welcomed the Russian warships back to the Mediterranean.

Times staff writer John M. Broder contributed to this story.