Despite being illogical, it's correct. It's a "collocation," and is used frequently. It is usually used when we are not talking literally. That is, we are not talking about someone who has served in the military, but figuratively, someone with a lot of experience in their job.
I personally like to verify such things by performing Google News searches, because the news articles it searches are recent and are usually in good English. A search will show you that reporters use it often.
A similar term, illogical and redundant but very common, is "new recruit."
(We can use the word "redundant" to describe unnecessary information that just duplicates something that's already been said.)