WASHINGTON — The Army remains on track to reach its expansion goal — a total of 547,000 active duty soldiers — in 2010, two years earlier than originally planned, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George M. Casey said Monday.

In a preview of a speech he will give today, Gen. Casey told reporters he expects to hit the goal, which represents an increase of tens of thousands of soldiers since 9-11. His comments reflect the Army's improvement in reaching its recruiting goals, an achievement leaders say continued in 2007.

Gen. Casey and Army Secretary Pete Geren gave an upbeat general assessment of the Army in a press conference at the annual convention of the Association of the U.S. Army, although Gen. Casey warned to expect a "future of persistent conflict" that suggests the Army will continue to look for hefty budget increases.

The continued growth of the Army is sure to shape future budget requests. With the expanded Army now taking more solid shape, officials are "actively working" on deciding how much the newly shaped Army needs to spend, Gen. Casey said.

Mr. Geren said officials want to avoid the sort of budget declines that have followed past military conflicts, including World War II and the Cold War. The next president will send a budget request to Congress in February, although most of the work on the request will have been done by the Bush administration.

"Defense spending ebbs and flows," Mr. Geren said. "Unpredictable funding is a problem for any large organization."

With the next occupant of the White House unknown, Army officials can expect to be peppered with questions about which weapons systems they want continued, whether efforts to reshape the Army may change and how big a budget is necessary. Gen. Casey was unable to answer another key question: what is the "tipping point" for the Army's ability to handle concurrent deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Generally, Gen. Casey said, the Army needs to keep its numbers of deployed soldiers no greater than now in order to handle those missions and face any other possible conflicts.

For the most part, members of Congress from both parties have applauded the Army's reorganization, which includes focusing on brigade combat teams that can be interchanged from larger division to division. That project is about 80 percent done, Gen. Casey said.