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General George Casey said the army is "out of balance" after six years of warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq, and facing unpredictable demands in an era of "persistent conflict."
"Out of balance is not broken, it's not hollow," he said. "But we're forced by the current demands on the force to do more in the current time frame at the expense of sustaining the all-volunteer force and building bridges for the future."
"We know where we need to go and it's going to take three or four years and a substantial amount of resources to put ourselves back in balance," he told reporters at an annual army conference.
Strains on the army intensified earlier this year when President George W. Bush decided to buildup US force levels in Iraq as part of an effort to bring spiraling sectarian violence under control.
To meet the demand for more troops, the army had to extend combat tours of units in Iraq to 15 months from 12 months.
Otherwise, it would have had to send in units that had less than a year to rest and train between combat deployments.
Last month, Bush acted to reverse the surge, announcing plans to reduce the number of US combat brigades in Iraq from 20 to 15 by July. That could bring US force levels from 165,000 today to between 130,000 and 140,000.
Nevertheless, Army Secretary Pete Geren told reporters it was still "impossible to predict" how much longer the army will have to rely on the extended tours to generate the forces required for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Casey said the 15 month tours were "temporary."
"We are in the midst of analyzing that and the impact on our ability to come off a 15 month deployment," he said.
The long deployments and short time at home has left army units with little time to train for conventional warfare or contingencies other than Iraq.
Casey said it will take the army three to four years to gain the additional troops, training time and equipment needed to field an army ready for all kinds of warfare.
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