The Air Force’s Active Duty component, the Air National Guard, and Air Force Reserve met their fiscal-year-to-date recruiting accession goals through March, the halfway point for Fiscal 2012, according to the Pentagon’s latest recruiting statistics, issued on April 23. In fact, after getting off to a slow start this fiscal year, the Air Guard is tracking slightly ahead at the midway point, having accepted 4,206 accessions, 14 more than its goal of 4,192, according to the Defense Department’s numbers. USAF’s Active Duty component attracted 14,353 recruits through March, exactly matching its goal. Similarly, the Reserve brought in 4,255 accessions, meeting its target. Among the other services, each Active Duty component at least met, if not slightly exceeded, its accession goals through March. Across their reserve components, only the Army National Guard fell short of its goal. (See also our coverage of February’s recruiting numbers.)
Air Force exercises in the Indo-Pacific may soon get even bigger and more robust, as lawmakers move to invest more than $620 million in such efforts. The bulk of that money, contained in a $150 billion reconciliation package currently making its way through Congress, is $532.6 million for earmarked for…