WASHINGTON - The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are stretching the U.S. Marine Corps, forcing the service to take extraordinary measures to bolster both personnel and equipment.

On Tuesday, the Marines announced plans to recall as many as 2,500 inactive reservists to involuntary active-duty service to meet manpower needs. It is the first such call-up since nearly 2,700 Marines were recalled to active duty before U.S. forces invaded Iraq in 2003.

The announcement coincided with a report to be issued today by two military experts who say that the Marines are having to borrow equipment from non-deployed units and pre-positioned stockpiles to replace tanks, trucks, armored vehicles and other hardware worn out by more than three years of combat duty in Iraq.

The two events are the latest signs that the U.S. military is having difficulty maintaining its combat readiness with the Iraq war well into its fourth year.

A Marine spokeswoman denied that the Marines are having difficulty finding recruits or volunteers for war-zone duty. Instead, Maj. Gabrielle Chapin said, the service is looking to deepen the availability of Marines with specific training. "What we do need is a pool of very specific skill sets to fill critical job specialties," she said.

Yet the call-up is a rare one for the smallest of the country's four military services. Fewer than 180,000 Marines serve on active duty, but the Corps has consistently met or exceeded its recruiting and re-enlistment goals for years, even as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq drag on.

Those expected to receive involuntary activation notices include infantry and other combat specialties, communications and intelligence specialists, combat engineers and military police, the Marines said. Marines in their first and last years of inactive reserve status will be excluded from the recall. Those recalled to service will get at least five months' notice.

A Marine spokesman at the Pentagon said Tuesday night that the Corps wouldn't be able to determine until at least today how many veterans could be affected in each state. But North Carolina is likely to have an outsized share.

It's common for those who leave the military to settle near the last base where they served, and in recent years hundreds of thousands of Marines have served at Camp Lejeune and the state's two Marine air stations, New River and Cherry Point. Lejeune is the largest Marine base on the East Coast, with more 45,000 troops.

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