Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, did not discount potential conventional threats posed by countries such as Iran, North Korea or China, but said priorities needed to be reconsidered in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 strikes.

"We are recognizing that there are some things that in the past didn't get as much attention relative to the more traditional kinds of military problems that need greater emphasis," he told defense reporters here.

"Clearly the problem of terrorism, unconventional kinds of threats, is a big issue," he said.

Feith said the re-thinking of priorities was part of an effort to set the terms for a major strategy review that is conducted every four years.

The last such review in 2001 asserted that US military forces should be able to fight two major regional conflicts near-simultaneously, toppling a regime in one conflict while prevailing in a second.

As a result, the US military has been structured and sized to fight quick, high-intensity wars against conventionally armed foes.

But the army, faced with a protracted insurgency in Iraq, is struggling to sustain the forces needed to pacify the country nearly two years after toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein in a swift campaign.

Feith gave few details of how the priorities ultimately will pan out or what impact they might have on the types of forces that the US military fields in coming years.

But a budget document leaked earlier this month suggests that the air force and navy's costly fleets of fighter aircraft and warships are vulnerable, while the army stands to gain from big increases in funding.

The memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, which was first reported by Inside Defense, a trade publication, set forth 30 billion dollars in cuts for the fiscal 2006 budget.

The number of new F-22 fighters the air force would buy would be slashed by a third; an aircraft carrier would be retired; and the navy would get fewer destroyers and submarines. Even the missile defense program would be cut by five billion dollars over six years if the cuts are enacted.

"Nobody ever has unlimited resources," Feith said. "We have to make sure everything we do fits within the bounds."

Aside from terrorism, other concerns Feith mentioned included the use of biological weapons by terrorists and "possible disruptive capabilities -- things that could be developed which would have a major disruptive effect on our military capabilities and society more generally."

"We are using all kinds of technologies, even something as basic as electricity, in a way that there could be major disruptions if somebody were in a position to interfere with some of the technologies that we have become very dependent upon," he said.

The United States does not have "the luxury to say we are going to worry about some problems and not others. Anything that is a serious problem we have to worry about," he said.

"But when we find that things that as a country we have been worrying about and giving priority is now just part of a list, and the list has been growing and we have to broaden our view, then we have to have a different emphasis," he said.

"We need to put more emphasis on things that in the past were not high on the list, or not high enough on the list," he said.

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