With nearly 150,000 US troops tied down in Iraq for the forseeable future and 10,000 more in Afghanistan, questions have been raised about US military readiness if faced with a war in North Korea or elsewhere.

Rumsfeld said the Joint Staff is currently "re-analyzing" US war plans to determine whether existing US forces are sufficient to do what they are now doing and still be able to meet other potential contingencies.

The studies, he said, are finding that "mass is interesting but not necessarily determinative," given the increased "lethality" demonstrated by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"And they are looking at other ways of achieving the kinds of effects that are desired in those contingency plans, and we find that often it requires fewer people than the existing information," he said.

Rumsfeld also contended at a press conference that more can be done to ease the stress on US forces without increasing their size.

Among the measures he cited:

-- fill more jobs now held by military personnel with civilians;

-- find more efficient ways to deploy and redeploy forces;

-- bring in more Iraqi police and troops;

-- increase the size of the international contingent;

-- and reduce the US military presence in places like Bosnia, Kosovo and the Sinai.

"At the moment I don't believe that anyone that I've talked to has evidence that argues that we have done those kinds of things sufficiently effectively that one could make a current case for increasing end strength," he said.

General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted the high cost of training and equipping each new soldier and said more troops do not offer an immediate solution because of the lag time before they can be fielded.

The army's troop strength was a major bone of contention in Rumsfeld's relations with former army chief of staff, retired General Eric Shinseki, who argued that army needed to add 20,000 to 40,000 troops to its ranks to meet the increased requirements.

Shinseki also ran afoul of Rumsfeld for insisting before the war in Iraq that several hundred thousand troops would be needed for an extended period of time after the war to secure the country.

General Pete Schoomaker, Rumsfeld's choice to replace Shinseki, revived the debate late last month when asked at his confirmation hearing whether the army had enough troops for the tasks it has been given.

He told senators that the force needed to be rebalanced.

"But I'm going to take a little risk here and I'm going to tell you that, intuitively, I think we need more people. I mean, it's just that simple," Schoomaker said.

Rumsfeld chafed at the quote when asked about it Tuesday at a press conference, suggesting the general had been misquoted and insisting there was not much difference in their views.

General John Keane, the army's deputy chief of staff, told defense reporters at a breakfast Tuesday that before making a case for more troops the army had to free up more troops from jobs that could be performed by civilians.

But he said the army was "obviously stretched" by the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and he had "no doubt" more troops were needed.

"We're short infantry, we're short chem bio (specialists), we're short military police," he said. "Overall, truly we're stressed, and we know we're short certain skill sets we've got to fix."

WAR.WIRE