The Pentagon, already straining to fill the ranks, is facing a new headache: Army medical officials said yesterday they are struggling to recruit enough doctors, dentists, nurses, and other healthcare professionals to treat soldiers on the front lines and to care for the growing physical and mental health needs of troops returning from combat.

The U.S. generals running the war in Iraq presented a new assessment of the military situation in public comments and sworn testimony this week: The 149,000 U.S. troops currently in Iraq are increasingly part of the problem.

The Army has a master plan for recovering from this year’s painful recruiting problems that includes new financial incentives for enlistees, greater use of computers, a new way for recruiters to make their pitch and a proposed finder’s fee for soldiers who refer recruits. Some private analysts are skeptical. Michael O’Hanlon, defense specialist at the Brookings Institution, said Monday that if conditions should worsen, the future of the all-volunteer force could be in jeopardy.

The Pentagon said yesterday that U.S. troop drawdowns from Iraq are not assured after the nation's Dec. 15 elections and that levels may even go up, if top commanders need more manpower. Army Gen. George Casey, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, initially held out the hope for "substantial" reductions. But he backed off those predictions after prominent Sunnis failed to sign on to Iraq's new constitution.

The number of Iraqi army battalions that can fight insurgents without U.S. and coalition help has dropped from three to one, top U.S. generals told Congress yesterday, adding that the security situation in Iraq is too uncertain to predict large-scale American troop withdrawals anytime soon.

The Army is closing the books on one of the leanest recruiting years since it became an all-volunteer service three decades ago, missing its enlistment target by the largest margin since 1979 and raising questions about its plans for growth.

U.S. National Guard units are under-equipped and increasingly unready to help in domestic disaster relief because essential gear is left behind after service in Iraq and Afghanistan, a congressional report said on Thursday. Heavy demands on the Guard since September 11, 2001, have caused "declining readiness, weakening the Army National Guard's preparedness for future missions," the Government Accountability Office said.

Casualties in Iraq have shifted toward citizen soldiers as their combat role has grown to historic levels. National Guard officials say their soldiers have been sent into combat in Iraq in numbers not previously seen in modern times — far more than were sent to Vietnam, where active-duty troops did the vast majority of the fighting.

The Army's top official has authorized the service to lower its entrance requirements for new recruits, a move he says is not aimed at sacrificing standards but instead meant to reduce chronic enlistment shortfalls.

The top U.S. general in Iraq on Wednesday cast doubt on his previous forecasts of a substantial cut in American forces in 2006, saying Iraq was in a period of heightened uncertainty that made it "too soon to tell" if troops can be brought home.