It’s all part of an effort to slash the size of the active duty Army from about 570,000 at the height of the Iraq war to 490,000 by 2017. The cutbacks began last year, and as of the end of March the Army was down to less than 558,000 troops.

For a time during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army lowered its recruiting standards, raising the number of recruits who entered the Army with moral, medical and criminal — including felony — waivers.

Recruits with misdemeanors, which could range from petty theft and writing bad checks to assault, were allowed into the Army, as well as those with some medical problems or low aptitude scores that might otherwise have disqualified them.

A very small fraction of recruits had waivers for felonies, which included convictions for manslaughter, vehicular homicide, robbery and a handful of sex crimes. The sex crimes often involved consensual sex when one of the individuals was under 18.

In 2006, about 20 percent of new Army recruits came in under some type of waiver, and by the next year it had grown to nearly three in 10. After the Defense Department issued new guidelines, the percentage needing waivers started to come down in 2009.

Now, as the Army moves to reduce its force, some soldiers will have to leave.

Officials say they hope to make cuts largely through voluntary attrition. But Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, has warned that as much as 35 percent of the cuts will be “involuntary” ones that force soldiers to abandon what they had hoped would be long military careers.

“This is going to be hard,” said Gen. David Rodriguez, head of U.S. Army Forces Command. “This is tough business. As we increase things like re-enlistment standards, some of the people who were able to re-enlist three years ago won’t be able to re-enlist again.”

The Army, in an internal slide presentation, is blunt: “Re-enlistment is a privilege, not a right; some ‘fully qualified’ soldiers will be denied re-enlistment due to force realignment requirements and reductions in end strength.”

In a memo earlier this year, Army Secretary John McHugh laid out more stringent criteria for denying re-enlistment, including rules that would turn away soldiers who have gotten a letter of reprimand for a recent incident involving the use of drugs or alcohol, or some soldiers who were unable to qualify for a promotion list.

“It’s all focused on allowing us … to retain only those soldiers who have the right skills, the right attributes and who help us meet the requirements and are those soldiers which truly have the greatest potential,” said Army Brig. Gen. Richard P. Mustion, the Army’s director of military personnel management.

Last year, as the budget and personnel cuts began to take hold, just a bit more than 10 percent of Army recruits needed waivers to join. The bulk of those — about 7 percent — were medical waivers, which can include poor eyesight that can be corrected. About 3 percent were for misconduct that did not involve convictions.

The decline in recent years was almost entirely on conduct waivers, not medical. As an example, there were 189 recruits with “major misconduct” waivers last year, and none with criminal convictions, compared to 546 misconduct waivers in 2009 and 220 with convictions.

Mustion said that as Army recruiters look at the applicants coming in they “are truly able to identify the very best soldiers, future soldiers, and those who display the greatest potential.”

He said they are evaluating each one on his physical, academic and aptitude test performances “and, quite frankly, would they require a waiver to come into the military versus the next soldier who has the same credentials but wouldn’t require a waiver.”

Waivers have long been a source of debate. Military officials have defended the process, saying it allows good people who once made a minor mistake to enlist. But mid-level officers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan also told top defense officials that the dramatic rise in the number of bad-behavior waivers was a problem, that they were often spending too much time on “problem children.”

. Steven Dale Green, a former 101st Airborne Division soldier, came into the Army on a morals waiver because of an earlier problem with drugs. He is now serving five life terms for killing an Iraqi family and raping and killing the 14-year-old daughter in March 2006.

With the economy struggling, it’s still a recruit-rich environment. But Army officials worry that as the economy gets better, they may not get all the high quality recruits they need, and their best soldiers may decide not to re-enlist because they may do better in the corporate world.

For now, however, the Army is saving money in the process.

According to Mustion, soldiers in just six types of jobs are getting bonuses when they enlist: interpreter/translators, divers, cryptologic linguists, medical laboratory specialists and explosive ordnance disposal specialists. And those bonuses average about $3,300-$3,500, he said.

That is a steep drop from the $16,000-$18,000 bonuses the Army was paying on average to new recruits in 2007-08. In the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2008, the Army paid nearly $860,000 in enlistment bonuses, compared to just $77,000 in the 2011 fiscal year.

Re-enlistment bonuses for soldiers now average about $7,500-$7,700.

Military leaders say the key goal is to shape the force as they cut, winnowing out not only the lesser qualified, but keeping the right number of soldiers in critical jobs and all across the ranks, particularly the mid-level officers.

“We need to keep the right balance,” said Rodriguez. “We don’t want a well-modernized force with no personnel that are trained.”

The Army, he said, “can build a young soldier quickly, but we can’t build a major and a sergeant quickly. So we have to figure out the right ratios as we move forward, and we have to be able to expand if we need to.”

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Lolita C. Baldor can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lbaldor .

“If we determine that we’re going to allow women to go in the infantry and be successful, they are probably at some time going to have to go through Ranger school,” Odierno told reporters. “If we decide to do this, we want the women to be successful.”

According to Odierno, about 90 percent of senior Army infantry officers have gone to the school and are qualified as Rangers. Allowing women to go to Ranger school, he said, would allow them to be competitive with their male counterparts as they move through the ranks.

Going to Ranger school, however, does not automatically mean women would be allowed to serve in one of the Army’s three elite Ranger battalions, which are Army special operations forces. In fact, many male soldiers who wear the coveted Ranger tab on their uniforms never actually serve in one of the three battalions.

Currently, women are not allowed to serve as special operations, infantry or armor forces, which are considered the most dangerous combat jobs. They are, however, allowed to serve in a number of support jobs such as medics, military police and intelligence officers that are sometimes attached to combat brigade units.

Odierno said his commanders are looking at whether the Army should open up infantry and armor jobs to women, and how that should be done.

As of this week, 200 women reported to nine different battalions around the country, as the Army implements plans to formally allow women to serve in smaller units that are closer to the front lines. New Pentagon rules allowing women to serve at the battalion level — rather than just the larger brigade — were unveiled earlier this year, opening up about 14,000 more jobs for women across all the military services. There are currently more than 250,000 positions that are closed to women.

A brigade is roughly 3,500 troops split into several battalions of about 800 soldiers each. Historically, brigades were based farther from the front lines and they often include top command and support staff, while battalions are usually in closer contact with the enemy.

Women make up about 16 percent of the Army.

The U.S. is the only major nation that has refused to sign the treaty, which has been endorsed by 161 countries and the European Union.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta dismissed objections from treaty opponents who claim that it would restrict military operations or limit intelligence collection in territorial waters.

The opponents, he said, “have put forward the myth that the Law of the Sea Convention would force us to surrender U.S. sovereignty. Nothing, nothing, could be further from the truth. Not since we acquired the lands of the American West and Alaska have we had such a great opportunity to expand U.S. sovereignty.”

Panetta added that signing onto the treaty would help enforce sea lanes, including the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has threatened to block.

“We are determined to preserve freedom of transit there in the face of Iranian threats to impose a blockade,” said Panetta, even as U.S. ships continue to travel through the Strait in part to show that the U.S. will not tolerate any effort to restrict travel there. Ratifying the treaty, Panetta added, would “help strengthen worldwide transit passage rights under international law and isolate Iran as one of the few remaining non-parties to the convention.”

Military leaders have also noted that the treaty is becoming more critical as nations compete for new shipping routes and natural resources in the Arctic, where the receding ice is opening sea lanes to more traffic.

A number of Republican senators oppose the pact.

So far, two dozen senators have signed a letter being circulated by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., vowing to oppose the treaty if it gets to the Senate for a vote.

The senators said in the letter that that “are particularly concerned that United States sovereignty could be subjugated in many areas” to an authority representing various countries. The letter is to be sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to have a hearing on the matter, and Panetta is slated to testify.

Jodi Seth, spokesperson for Sen. John Kerry, the panel chairman, said Wednesday that there are many new members of the Senate.

“Reliably conservative-minded businesses and notable Republican national security experts have urged action to protect America’s interests. The unlikely allies who support the Treaty make a powerfully persuasive case,” said Seth.

The treaty regulates the ocean’s use for military, transportation and mineral extraction purposes and it recognizes sovereign rights over a country’s continental shelf out to 200 nautical miles and beyond if a country can substantiate its claims.

The Bush and Obama administrations have supported the pact, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has spoken several times about its importance.

Col. Thomas K. Wark, commander of the Virginia Air Guard’s 192nd Fighter Wing, said there would be no disciplinary or administrative actions taken against the pilots.

The pilots spoke out about oxygen-deficit problems with the stealth fighter, which have resulted in pilot dizziness, blackouts and other hypoxia-like symptoms.

According to the Air Force just two pilots have asked not to fly the F-22 or to be reassigned, and officials have said each pilot’s request would be handled individually.

The nation’s F-22 fighter jets were grounded for four months last year after pilots complained of experiencing a lack of oxygen that can cause dizziness and blackouts. Air Force officials said they have taken steps against the problem, but still haven’t pinpointed what’s causing the hypoxia-like symptoms. Hypoxia is when the body doesn’t receive enough oxygen.

“Though we have not yet resolved the root cause of some physiological events, we have mitigated the risk of F-22 flight operations to a level where we can safely operate the F-22 while we continue the investigation to identify the root cause,” said Lt. Col. John Dorrian on Tuesday.

Dorrian, an Air Force spokesman, said some of the measures taken to allow pilots to continue to fly the jets include an improved emergency oxygen system handle, a finger-mounted device to monitor pilot blood oxygen, and software updates to provide better oxygen sensors.

The planes are stationed at five other bases besides Virginia: Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska; Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii; Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.; Holloman Air Force Base, N.M.; and Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla.

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Lolita C. Baldor can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lbaldor