What Money Can Buy

By KURT ANDERSEN

"Weapons are being treated like commercial articles, just like machine tools or automobiles," says Arthur Alexander of the Rand Corp. "They talk about quality, performance, price. Look at the catalogues." He was referring to the arms directories published for prospective buyers by half a dozen national governments. (The U.S., where sales catalogues from Sears to the Whole Earth are practically national icons, has none.) The most elaborate are put out by Britain and France. Both distribute slick omnibus arms compendia, Britain every year since 1969, France biannually since 1967, that the world's wish-listing generals and defense ministers can flip through with the delight of boys at Christmas time. There are no order forms or suggested retail prices. But whether they prefer the grand, gilded and clothbound British Defence Equipment Catalogue in three volumes (5,000 printed, $150 per set) or France's more workaday, four-volume paperback catalogue (6,000 printed, free), arsenal shoppers can find everything they need to build the best army that money can buy.

The British catalogue is a self-described "quick and easy reference." Choosing is made quicker and easier by rating symbols: a land mine, for instance, can bear the mark of the Queen's Award for outstanding technological achievement.

The perspective is international: "To our many Mends we apologise that this Catalogue is printed only in English... Assistance can always be obtained from British Embassies."

The small BAC 167 Strikemaster jet fighter, for example, "is now in service with twelve air forces throughout the world" and "offers a uniquely cost-effective solution for counter-insurgency." Is the client's country a bit underdeveloped? No problem: Strikemaster "has proved its ability to operate ... under actual combat conditions from primitive airstrips." The insurgents themselves might be interested in some of the wares. For example, the Blowpipe is a 44-lb. antiaircraft missile system that can be fired by a lone attacker. On one page is a "cratering kit," designed to blow 25-ft.-wide holes in runways; on another, aluminum runway repair matting (installable by "completely unskilled labor") is for sale.

Britannia once ruled the waves; today its customers can make the attempt. A whole navy is available off the peg:

there are 200-ft.-long "fast patrol boats," destroyers, fiber-glass-and-plastic-hulled minesweepers, troop-carrying Hovercraft and even a 670-ft., 14,000-ton Vickers aircraft carrier. Nor is the infantry slighted: there are mortars (51 mm or 81 mm), silencer-equipped submachine guns, four-round sniper rifles (99% accuracy at 400 meters) and a battery-powered grenade launcher. Missiles? Try an air-to-air Sky Flash or a ship-to-air Seawolf, a Rapier ("low cost" and "low weight") or a Swingfire ("long-range" and "antitank"). Once the weapons are ordered, there are British firms that will train troops and commanders, plan communications systems and even help manage bases.

The catalogue's descriptive paeans are seldom graphic about the weapons' deadly effects. Usually the language is willfully neutral: one shell that spews out steel pellets is merely "useful to engage massed infantry at close quarters." But peddler's enthusiasm can overcome the technocratic blankness. A 105-mm artillery piece is "robust" and its "lethal punch" is thus "ideal for use in tough limited war conditions in all climates." One transport is a "tough, roomy, dependable" aircraft, and the catalogue says of the AEL 4111 Snipe aerial drone for antiaircraft gunners: "The morale effect on weapons crews who are able to see their target destroyed is incalculable."

The high-tech gimcracks do have an undeniable allure.

Take the Claribel hostile fire indicator. This truck-mount -- ed radar "tracks bullets ... and pinpoints their source but," adds the knowing copywriter, "ignores stones or bricks."

Video equipment is much in evidence, and a helicopter-mounted, gyro-stabilized TV camera could make for a strangely deracinated war: with a fleet of these Heli-Teles swarming over the combat zone, a commander can sit behind the lines and watch the action on color television.

Much of the merchandise is prosaic -- flashlights, generators and, for fighting file clerks, a bullet-proof clipboard.

There is throughout a domestic matter-of-factness that jars:

a piece of circuitry "fits any standard bomb," and a suit to protect against radiation and nerve gas "can be laundered."

Even aesthetic and creature comforts are not ignored. An "armoured command vehicle" called Sultan has "a spacious penthouse mounted at the rear," and there is a Vickers division specializing in the interior decoration of warships.

France's catalogue is not as lavish as Britain's, but its descriptions (in French, English and Spanish) are more vivid militarily and, in general, less polite. One piece of howitzer ammunition is touted as having "a better ballistic coefficient than the American shell," and a 30-mm aircraft round is "very effective against persons." A 22-lb. French "Commando" mortar is perfect for those times when combat squads "have to fight violently at very short distances." The brief entries tend to a breathless specificity. A smoke bomb lets a tank "escape temporarily from the adversary's sight and prevent the latter from adjusting his fire"; a 105-mm antitank rocket launcher is "designed for use by either a right-or a left-handed soldier." The French grant far more space to the nitty-gritty of war: pistols, plastic explosives and grenades (including one that was "designed to dazzle several antagonists").

Both catalogues brim with ads for mundane materiel like air conditioners and fork lifts. But it is the devices to cause or cope with death that startle, especially when their descriptions escape the morass of jargon and euphemism. There, between technical specifications, the ghastly suddenly rears up: the "squash head" tank shell, which "on impact on the outer wall of an armored vehicle causes a large scab of metal to fly off the inside surface with great velocity"; the airborne gadget that lays down "a pattern of evenly distributed bomblets"; body bags meant for "the transport of [fallout] contaminated casualties to cleansing areas."

-- By Kurt Andersen

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.