There is some genuinely good news on the military manpower front. Not only did all of the armed services meet their recruiting goals in Fiscal Year 2009, they also exceeded their projections for the number of troops entering basic training.

According to The Washington Times, the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps sent 169,000 new recruits to boot camp in the fiscal year that ended on 30 September. That’s 5,000 more than the Pentagon’s original projection, making 2009’s training total the highest since 1973, the first year of the all-volunteer military.

More troops in training means eventual relief for units stretched thin by constant deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. We stress the word “eventual,” because some of those recruits only recently reached their first duty assignments, after completing basic training and required technical schools.

Meanwhile, many of their comrades are still in training. It takes more than a year to train a military pilot, and technical training for some enlisted specialties are nearly as long. For example, a prospective Chinese linguist who just signed in at the Defense Language Institute won’t graduate until late 2010, and more training will follow at their first duty assignment. A running joke among airborne linguists (who fly on USAF RC-135 and Navy EP-3 platforms) is that the end of upgrade training coincides with their eligibility to re-enlist.