Arms control pacts can be verified - includes related article

ARMS CONTROL PACTS CAN BE VERIFIED A dazzling collection of high- tech devices -- from spy satelli

When fire broke out aboard a Soviet nuclear submarine east of Bermuda last October, its captain and crew weren't the only ones to hear the boat's alarms go off. The signals were also picked up loud and clear by secret American listening devices on the continental shelf several hundred miles away. Indeed, thanks to these underwater acoustic detectors, which can record the reverberations of an explosion halfway round the world, the Pentagon may well have known about this accident, which eventually led to the vessel's sinking, before the Kremlin did.

Strategically placed along the East, Gulf, and Pacific coasts, as well as in other militarily significant areas, such as the approaches used by Soviet subs into the North Atlantic above Norway and into the Pacific near the Kuriles, the automated listening posts are just one link in a vast network of high-tech snooping devices that keep a continual watch on Soviet military activities, not to mention Nicaragua, the Iran-Iraq frontier, and terrorist training camps in North Africa and the Middle East.

By far the greatest share of the U.S. intelligence budget (at least $15 billion a year) now goes for what those in the business call non-intrusive technical means of information-gathering, or

TECHINT (technical intelligence), in contrast to HUMINT (human intelligence). These include giant hydrophones linked by cables on the ocean floor for monitoring the Soviet fleet of 375 subma- rines, reconnaissance satellites equipped with sharp-eyed cameras, radars on the perimeter of the Soviet Union looking out for missile launches, ELINT (electronic intelligence) listening posts in Turkey, Pakistan, and China, ships bristling with a variety of antennas, and large arrays of seismic detectors that pick up virtually every creak and groan of the earth, natural or man-made. Much of the information gathered by these electronic eyes and ears is screened, analyzed, and stored by computers that can process data at rates of billions of bits per second.

On balance the great investment in such sophisticated intelligence-gathering has been a force for peace. Nasty international incidents, like the crisis that ensued when Francis Gary Powers was shot down in his U-2 spy plane over the U.S.S.R. in 1960, are avoided.* Nor is one side likely to spring unpleasant surprises on the other. In 1967 President Johnson defended the billions spent for spy satellites by explaining that they told him ''how many missiles the ene- my has.'' Today they also pro- vide clues to their quality and potential for destructiveness. Even before the Soviets test- fire new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), the Pentagon usually has a good idea about such characteristics as ''throw weight,'' number of warheads, even accuracy.

However, as useful as such equipment may be for collecting military intelligence, it has another important role that has yet to be fully exploited: it can monitor Soviet compliance with the terms of arms control agreements -- or, in the shorthand of diplomacy, verification. At the moment, to be sure, there isn't much to verify. Only a handful of agreements exists to curb the arms race between the superpowers, notably the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which forbids nuclear test- ing everywhere but under ground; SALT II, which limits the number of strategic missiles, warheads, and launch- ers, and forbids camouflaging launch sites (but which has never been ratified by the Senate, and was effectively broken by President Reagan in November when he ordered a 131st B-52 bomber with cruise missiles deployed; and the ABM (antiballistic missile) Treaty, which prohibits the in-

troduction of exotic systems for intercepting ICBMs in flight, except to defend one mutually agreed upon site on each side. (The Soviets have chosen to defend Moscow; we've opted not to exercise the right, on the ground that any available defense would be easily penetrated.)

One reason for the lack of real progress in arms control is the widespread opinion that the Soviets will cheat on any agreement, and that undetected deception will give them the upper hand. The Reagan administration has used this argument to reject out of hand a proposal by the U.S.S.R. to halt all underground nuclear explosions. It insists -- counter to the arguments of some U.S. seismologists that Soviet tests could be detected -- that the U.S.S.R. could secretly continue to conduct such tests and leap ahead in weapons design. In any case, on Feb. 26 te Soviets ended their 18-month moratorium on testing by exploding a 20-kiloton nuclear bomb at Semipalatinsk. And the U.S. is continuing to detonate nuclear bombs under the deserts of Nevada.

The Kremlin, which long opposed on-site inspection, seems willing to accept it now for the sake of getting an agreement on arms reduction. Moscow's change of heart has been signaled not only by the statements of high-level spokesmen, from General Secretary Mikhail Gor bachev on down, but also in such direct action as permitting the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private American environmental group, to place seismic equipment inside the Soviet Union that could pick up the vibrations of underground tests. On Feb. 28 the U.S.S.R. proposed the withdrawal of all Soviet and American medium- range missiles in Europe independent of an agreement on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a proposal quickly welcomed by President Reagan.