In their Quadrennial Defense Review mandated by Congress, top military planners are aware that maintaining forces in Afghanistan and Iraq is limiting the Pentagon's ability to deal with other potential armed conflicts, the daily said.

The Pentagon for the first time in decades is seriously questioning the wisdom of the two-war strategy, the daily said, which got an overview of the major issues discussed in the classified review from interviews with civilian officials and military officers.

The unusual mission in Iraq has not just taken the slot for one of the two wars; it has upended the central concept of the two-war model, the paper said.

After years of saying US forces were sufficient for a two-war strategy, "we've come to the realization that we're not," an unnamed Defense Department official was quoted as saying. "It's coming to grips with reality."

Civilian and military officials are trying to decide to what degree to acknowledge that operations like Iraq - not a full-blown conventional war, but a prolonged commitment - may be such a burden that it would not be possible to also fight two full-scale campaigns elsewhere, said the Times.

The review, it added, is analyzing in detail what would happen if the United States had to fight China, North Korea or Iran.

"The war in Iraq requires a very large ground-force presence ... War with China or North Korea or Iran ... would require a much more capable Navy and Air Force," said Loren Thompson, an analyst at the Lexington Institute, a policy research center in Arlington, Virginia.

"What we need for conventional victory is different from what we need for fighting insurgents, and fighting insurgents has relatively little connection to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. We can't afford it all," he added.

The Defense Review, which is not due to be submitted to Congress until early 2006, is "an effort to create a construct that will bring a better balance" among domestic defense, the antiterrorism campaign and conventional military requirements, the officials told the daily.

Two-war strategies, the newspaper said, argue for more high-technology weapons, in particular warplanes.

An emphasis on one war and counterterrorism duties would require lighter, more agile forces - perhaps fewer troops, but more Special Operations units - and a range of other needs, such as intelligence, language and communications specialists.

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