Lieutenant General Michael Rochelle, deputy chief of staff for personnel, said expanding the army to 547,000 troops by 2010 is key to easing mounting pressures on the force while building a hedge against other unforseen conflicts.

But he said the active duty army's recruiting and retention goals will remain unchanged in 2008 at 80,000 enlistments and 65,000 re-enlistments respectively.

"What those numbers respresent is a realistic view of how challenging it is at this point in time to leverage all of our growth on the back of recruiting alone," he told defense reporters.

"We have pretty much maxed out on the ability to grow retention," he added.

Instead, the army hopes to tap into the recruiting efforts of the army national guard and reserve components to bring additional troops in for active duty stints of as little as two and a half years.

Rochelle said the national guard program is expected to bring in 1,500 to 3,000 extra troops in 2008.

But it was unclear how the army will meet its goal of expanding by 28,000 troops in three years from its current strength of about 519,000.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressed skepticism about the army plan but gave his approval last month on condition that the army not lower recruiting standards or use so-called "stop loss" authorities to retain soldiers on active duty beyond their term of enlistment.

Currently, 9,000 soldiers in units slated for deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan are being retained on active duty, according to Rochelle, who said those numbers will subside next year as surge forces withdraw from Iraq.

But he said, "Until there is some reduction in demand, we are going to have to rely unfortunately ... on stop loss. I won't say for the forseeable future, but until the demand comes down, we can't do without it."

Rochelle said the army's plans to grow in size are "high risk" but said the service faces a greater risk of not being able to meet unexpected contingencies or ease stress on the force if it does not accelerate its expansion.

"The solution is to grow the force as quickly as we possibly can not just for the strategic edge that I believe (we need), but also to relieve some of the pressure on the force," he said.

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