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Training
Every year, this all-volunteer unit receives as many as five times as many applicants as it can accept. Most candidates are screened out by rigorous acceptance criteria and the arduous training regimen that follows. Paratroop training, which is tough and unrelenting, reflects the versatile role which this force will have to play on present and future battlefields. This includes massive doses of physical fitness, topography, mastery of a wide array of weapons as well as training in mobile, airborne, heliborne and amphibious operations, as well as integrated operations with armor and artillery, day and night assaults against different types of objectives, and the famous IDF Jump School. All paratroopers go through NCO school before being trained in a military specialty. Those destined to become platoon leaders are sent to Officers' School. Personal qualities required of an IDF Paratrooper are courage, professional knowledge, ability to decide, capacity to improvise solutions when faced with difficult or unexpected situations, and leadership ability. Officers must serve as personal examples to their men. Ties between officers and enlisted men are direct and long-lasting, with no artificial barrier separating them.
Women serve in the Infantry and Paratroop Corps as instructors (in such fields as marksmanship, anti-tank missiles, etc.), educators, administrative and technical personnel. At the Paratrooper Training Base, women likewise serve as parachute riggers and inspectors. They undergo a jump course to increase their identification with the paratroopers whose lives are literally in their hands.