WASHINGTON — With the Army expecting to be thousands of recruits short of its goal this fall, and next year's recruiting prospects looking even worse, the United States' largest military service will likely be an older force, facing more frequent missions and struggling to fill key jobs, say analysts and former officers.

If the trends continue, the U.S. military will be made up largely of volunteers from the nation's rural areas and the South.

Besides the active Army, the Army Reserve and the National Guard also are expected to miss their yearly goals and fall thousands of recruits short.

This comes despite pledging tens of thousands of dollars in sign-up bonuses, sending thousands more recruiters into the streets, and mounting a new ad campaign aimed at parents.

The Army is about 7,000 soldiers short of its 80,000 yearly recruiting goal with less than two months before the end of the fiscal year. The Army Reserve is about 5,000 short of its 23,000 goal, and the Army National Guard is nearly 11,000 below its year-end goal of 51,000.

The rising casualty rate in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with a stronger economy, has 17-to-24-year-olds thinking twice. And Army polling data show that parents have increasingly soured on letting their children take part in the war on terror.

Army officials are beginning to see the effects of long and repeated deployments. Young officers, principally Army captains, are leaving at higher rates (specific percentages were not available). The Army is considering a number of incentive packages to persuade them to stay.

And last month, the Pentagon asked Congress to increase the maximum age for military recruits to 42 for all branches of the armed services, up from 39.

"The ripple effects are more extensions to tours and earlier repeat tours," said retired Army Lt. Gen. Theodore G. Stroup Jr., who was chief of Army personnel during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. "The Army will continue to be stretched and strained."

Leonard Wong, a retired Army officer and an analyst at the Army War College, said the Army could continue its effort to boost its fighting ranks by pulling soldiers from administrative jobs, sending them into fighting units and outsourcing their old jobs to civilians.

Scales said the Army has three options: reduce its missions, increase recruiting or institute a draft. Only option two is politically supportable, he said.

To succeed, he believes the Army must provide more money for those willing to go into harm's way for their country — not just in signing bonuses but in regular pay. And he favors recruitment of more foreign-born residents, particularly Middle Easterners, with a promise of citizenship.