Families in the 1457th Engineer Battalion spoke bitterly of broken promises. The Pentagon had pledged that tours of duty in the war zone would be for no more than 12 months - after doubling orders that initially had been cut for six months.

"The fabric of the family starts to unravel," said Kristen Merrill, of Layton, whose husband and other members of the Army Reserve 419th Transportation Company were among 20,000 U.S. troops whose orders had been extended beyond a year.

Frustrations of Utah soldiers and their families are echoed in a report by Congress' watchdog agency that says mobilization of the nation's citizen soldiers has been disorganized and piecemeal.

The Government Accountability Office said deployments based on short-term requirements not only are causing uncertainty among families but also may compromise long-term military goals in the nation's global war on terrorism.

The September report made it clear that the nation cannot wage war without its citizen soldiers. Yet if current practices are continued, the authors wrote, re-enlistments may decline and numbers of National Guard members and reservists will be stretched to the breaking point.

"Currently, a plan is being advanced where National Guard soldiers will deploy no more than once every six years. That plan, however, assumes a rebalancing of forces so you have what you need, when and where you need it," said Tarbet, Utah's adjutant general.

"Both rebalancing forces and retraining forces for specific missions represent a sea change for the military. Both approaches deploy units that can fight, win and survive."

The Defense Department is authorized to mobilize no more than 1 million Guard members or reservists during a national emergency, and those deployments may not exceed 24 consecutive months. The Pentagon, however, limits deployments to 24 months of cumulative - not consecutive - duty, which may mean the nation "will run out of forces," wrote Derek Stewart, GAO director of Defense Capabilities and Management.

Utah Guard spokeswoman Maj. Lorraine Januzelli said 80 percent of the state's National Guard already has been mobilized for tours of 12 to 15 months. It would be impracticable to deploy those soldiers again because training and transportation to theaters of operations would mean they would reach the limit of 24 cumulative months of active service.

"We've just about run out of soldiers in Utah to mobilize," she said. "Other states not as heavily tasked will have to pick up the slack. Beyond that, I don't know."

Nationwide, National Guard members and reservists are serving substantially more time - about a third longer - on active duty than in the 1990-91 Gulf War. And that "is expected to continue to rise," said the 92-page report.

The Army based its plans for mobilization on outdated assumptions on the availability of facilities and support personnel, which also caused poor medical oversight and housing shortages.

Utah soldiers from the 172nd Medical Battalion are well aware of housing shortages documented in the report. During their final training at Fort Carson, Colo., last year, the Army reservists slept on cots in a gymnasium.

Down the hallway, 50 female soldiers bunked in two racquetball courts and, upstairs, officers' beds were set up between weightlifting equipment and treadmills.

Thousands of other reservists from several Western states slept in tents on Colorado's windswept open range.

Lack of proper planning brought bottlenecks, delays and rescinded orders.

At Fort Lewis, Wash., the 1457th could not ship out its equipment for several weeks last year after the battalion had been certified as combat-ready. At the same time, the 854th Quartermaster Company underwent final training at the fort, but then the unit was sent home five months later because it was determined "their services were not needed," said Claude McKinney, spokesman for the 96th Regional Readiness Command.

Uncertainties about mobilizations and overseas rotations might cut into recruiting. For instance, the Army National Guard failed to meet is recruiting goal in 14 of 20 months during the period ended in May, said the report. By the end of 2003, the National Guard was about 7,800 soldiers below its recruiting goal.