The courses cover personnel whose main responsibilities include moving supplies, maintaining equipment and providing medical or administrative support. These soldiers help combat units function, but their jobs can bring them into operational areas even when fighting is not their primary assignment.
Training Beyond the Regular Assignment
The newspaper's military correspondent, Emanuel Fabian, interviewed the school's commander and deputy. They described instruction intended to improve readiness for encounters with an enemy, rather than replace the soldiers' specialist functions.
Courses include weapons handling, physical fitness and driving in darkness using night vision equipment. The report said the intended participants come from logistics, maintenance, medicine, signals, human resources and the military rabbinate. Not every participant therefore arrives with the same professional background or previous training.
Commanders Draw on Their Experience
The deputy commander, identified in the report only by the Hebrew initial Shin, described fighting near Kissufim during the October 7 attack. His account illustrated the problem the school is intended to address: support officers can face combat before they have the preparation associated with a frontline role.
The commander also linked the program to experience gained during the attack and subsequent operations. These are accounts given by the officers to The Times of Israel. They explain the program's stated rationale, but do not constitute an independent assessment of its effectiveness.
Participation Is Not Yet Mandatory
According to the report, the courses are not compulsory. Instructors also travel to soldiers' bases to provide training, an approach intended to reach personnel who remain committed to their regular units and duties.
That distinction limits what can be concluded from the school's creation. The existence of courses does not establish that every eligible soldier has completed them. The report did not provide a comprehensive enrollment figure or a measured comparison of readiness before and after participation.
What the Program Can Establish
For combat units, support personnel sustain the supply of food, fuel, ammunition and replacement parts. Training those personnel for dangerous situations is therefore connected to the continuation of ordinary military operations, rather than to a new mission announced in the report.
The next issue is the program's reach and implementation. Broader participation, any decision to make courses mandatory and evidence of results would show how far the initiative changes preparation across the force. For now, the publicly described development is a school and its courses, supported by its commanders' accounts; no force wide readiness improvement has been independently demonstrated.
