ABSTRACT
Armed forces are able to adopt professional education characteristics while maintaining the format of a citizen army. This claim will be illustrated by examining the changes that took place in the education of combat officers in the IDF’s ground forces during the 1990s. The first part of the chapter will discuss IDF officer military education courses prior to the late 1980s, which generally reflected the perception of the IDF as a “people’s army.” The second part will define the reasons for the transformation of the traditional courses, emphasizing the development of an institutional perception that came to regard professional military education as a solution to operational problems. The third part of the paper will outline and analyze the changes experienced by IDF military academies during the 1990s and will discuss their implications for the type and level of professional knowledge acquired by ground force officers, with reference to the growing gap between career and reserve officers.
