Currently there is no official regularity to reserve callups, and some who joined without expecting to ever be mobilized have been shocked to find themselves in Iraq for full-year tours.

There currently are about 66,500 Army Reserve members on active duty, both at home and in Iraq and elsewhere abroad. That is about one-third of the entire Army Reserve of 205,000 people.

Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, the Army Reserve chief, told reporters his proposal would give reservists a clearer idea of when they might be pulled from their civilian lives to serve on active duty.

"The culture in the Army Reserve is changing," he said. "We're changing from a force in reserve in which people believe they will never get mobilized, to telling them upfront: The intent is to prepare you and your unit for mobilization and the likelihood is you will be mobilized."

He was speaking for the Army Reserve, not the National Guard, which is managed differently, although officials said the Guard also is considering changing its mobilization system.

Every four or five years, an Army Reserve unit would be placed "on call" for six to nine months. While on call, the unit and its members could be called up on as little as five days' notice, Helmly said. The rest of the time they could expect not to be called on, except in an extreme emergency.

Helmly said this approach raises the question of whether prospective recruits might choose not to join if they are told in advance that they will likely be mobilized every four or five years.

He said he was optimistic that recruiting will not suffer severely. Reservists, he said, "don't wish to be part of a second-class team. They do wish to be challenged" so long as they know where they stand.

"There will be some people who will say, `I do not wish to be a part of that kind of force,'" Helmly said. To offset those losses, he wants the Army to begin offering bonuses to soldiers who are leaving the active-duty Army to encourage them to join the Reserves.

Helmly's proposed change in the mobilization system has not yet received final approval from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, according to Helmly's spokesman, Al Schilf.

Helmly said he visited Army Reserve members in Iraq and Kuwait during the Christmas holidays.

"Their biggest concern is the predictability part" - not knowing how long they will be kept on active duty, he said. Some were angry that after being mobilized last year on 12-month orders, they were told months later of a new Pentagon policy that extended their service by six months.

Helmly conceded that the Pentagon made life difficult for many reservists last year. He said about 10,000 Army Reserve members were called to active duty on less than five days' notice - much less time than most people need to make adequate arrangements with their family and employer.

Another 8,000 were called to active duty and then demobilized without ever being used. Of that number, about 4,000 to 5,000 were called up a second time after being demobilized, he said.

He said that happened because in April, when Baghdad fell to U.S. invaders, Pentagon leaders believed the war was essentially over and there would be less need for support from reservists. But when the anti-occupation insurgency intensified in June and July, the Pentagon had to reverse course and call on more reservists.

"Our soldiers are, for the most part, in good spirits," Helmly said. "They do want to know when they are going to get back home."

He added, however, that "there are some ugly stories," including those of people who complain that they were forced to leave high-paying civilian jobs in order to report for active duty.

"I just ask them straight up," he said. If a reservist was smart enough "to make a quarter of a million and you didn't figure out that you could get mobilized," then you get no sympathy.

Helmly also said he was planning to get rid of some Reserve units with specialties that are less in demand, such as water transportation and maintenance, so that he can fill personnel gaps in units that are more in demand, like military police and civilian affairs specialists.

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