Adjutant Corps

The corps’ responsibilities follow soldiers through their military service, encompassing assignments, professional advancement, personal problems, discharge, and mobilization for reserve duty.[4] Its personnel work both at headquarters and within IDF units, connecting individual needs with commanders’ manpower and operational requirements.[1] The corps serves officers, noncommissioned officers, enlisted soldiers, and reservists, and develops personnel-administration doctrine for both routine service and emergencies.[1]

The corps is headed by the Chief Adjutant Officer, a brigadier general.[1] The chief’s office contains four branches: Audit and Readiness; Doctrine, Training and Exercises; Human Resources; and Information Support and Control.[1] Personnel administrators serve within individual IDF units rather than operating solely from a central headquarters.[1]

Its functions include planning and regulating manpower, training, advancement, assignments, personnel reporting, pay, and service conditions, as well as handling and reporting casualties and deserters.[1] Emergency mobilization and preparation for war also fall within its responsibilities.[1] These duties place the corps within the broader manpower framework, whose responsibilities include mobilizing personnel, assigning them to units, and planning and controlling the IDF’s manpower resources.[5]

The Yom Kippur War exposed serious weaknesses in the IDF’s personnel administration, including difficulties tracking soldiers during hurried reserve mobilization, rapid changes in force composition, and mounting casualties, prisoners, and missing personnel.[1] Earlier arrangements divided responsibilities between a Personnel Administration handling officers and a General Adjutancy dealing with enlisted soldiers’ problems.[1] During the fighting, commanders were asked to compile lists of their subordinates, sometimes without knowing all the soldiers attached to their units.[1]

The Adjutant Corps was established in 1977 to enable more comprehensive management of human resources in routine and emergency conditions.[1] Its creation addressed the need for trained specialists who could assist commanders while attending to soldiers’ personnel needs.[1] Early growth was concentrated in reserve formations, alongside the wider expansion of the IDF after the war.[6] The corps helped staff expanding formations and develop specialized support roles, including welfare personnel and coordination with education and psychological staff.[6]

The deployment of corps personnel within units helped expand commanders’ personnel-management autonomy; in reserve units, this included more latitude over recruitment slots and assigning soldiers to roles.[6] Much of the corps’ early work involved recruiting, developing, and retaining soldiers who encountered difficulties during service.[6] Published estimates of the wider 1970s expansion included growth in regular personnel from 75,000 to 180,000 and reserve personnel from 225,000 to 370,000, as well as an approximately 25 percent increase in combat manpower during 1974 alone.[6]

Women’s participation included both unit-level personnel work and senior command.[7][8] A 2001 discussion of expanded service opportunities anticipated women filling combat-support positions as adjutancy or manpower officers, including at battalion level; its accompanying table listed 20 NCOs in the Adjutancy Corps, without assigning a separate date to that figure.[7] In May 2005, Orna Barbivai became the first woman to head an IDF corps when she assumed command of the Adjutant Corps.[8]

Barbivai subsequently headed the Ground Forces Manpower Section from 2006 to 2008 and served as Human Resources Directorate Administrator in the Manpower Directorate from 2008 to 2011.[8] On May 26, 2011, Defense Minister Ehud Barak approved her promotion to major general and appointment as head of the Manpower Directorate, making her the first woman to attain that rank in the IDF.[8] Her qualifications included a bachelor’s degree in social sciences and humanities from Ben Gurion University, an MBA from the University of Haifa, and completion of the “Turn-point” administration course for senior military officials.[8]

A January 2006 reorganization plan envisaged placing eight corps, including the Adjutant Corps, under the Ground Forces arm, bringing maneuvering, supporting, and combat-support corps and their training bases into a single framework for doctrine, training, and exercises.[9] In 2006, the corps was merged under the Ground Forces’ Manpower Brigade; in 2007, it returned to the exclusive subordination of the Manpower Directorate.[4]

The restructuring during Chief of Staff Dan Haloutz’s tenure included the closure of the adjutancy force, followed by its reestablishment through a process guided by Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.[10] The changes also involved transferring the chief adjutancy officer from the Human Resources Division, alongside transfers affecting 18 of that division’s 47 departments or subdivisions.[10]

The absence of the adjutancy force coincided with a career-soldier crisis after the Second Lebanon War.[10] Internal questionnaires found that more than half of surveyed captains, majors, and NCOs were seeking civilian-sector work while serving and seriously considering leaving the IDF.[10] One of the force’s main roles was dealing with career soldiers; in the years after the war, the career army’s situation stabilized and serving personnel’s satisfaction improved.[10]

The Casualties Department came under the corps in July 2016.[4] In 2017, on the fortieth anniversary of its establishment, the Adjutant Corps adopted the name Human Resources Corps as part of an effort to broaden its responsibilities and provide more comprehensive support to soldiers.[2] The accompanying vision included a “paperless adjutancy” and a more unified point of contact for individual needs.[2]

Adjutancy NCOs assist unit adjutant officers with practical personnel matters, including course assignments, promotions, and leave.[11] Personnel administrators support unit manpower management, while pay clerks handle unit financial matters and connect soldiers and commanders with the military pay center.[1] Welfare and service-condition personnel address economic, social, and personal circumstances that affect soldiers’ ability to continue serving.[1][11]

Recruitment coordinators assist with identification, screening, assignment, and individual guidance for prospective recruits.[1] Psychotechnical assessors evaluate prospective recruits and determine quality indicators, while research assessors support behavioral-science screening, research, morale surveys, and assessment centers for commanders.[1] In a 2015 account of the combat-service preference questionnaire, 90 percent of candidates were reported to have been placed in one of their two preferred units; the placement process sought to balance individual preferences with the army’s needs, which remained the priority.[12]

Training takes place at Bahad 11, formerly located in Tzrifin and subsequently moved to the IDF training campus in the Negev.[11] Listed training durations include approximately six weeks for adjutancy NCOs and eight weeks each for welfare and casualty personnel.[11] Corps roles are open to women and men and are classified as combat-support positions, some involving high risk.[11]

The broader approach introduced with the 2017 renaming sought to extend unit representatives’ attention beyond narrowly defined personnel administration to medical and logistical needs as well.[2] A periodic panel brought together officers responsible for individual care, including logistics, welfare, human resources, and medical personnel.[2]

Adjutant officers also had defined responsibilities in the procedures for sexual-offense complaints described in July 2013.[13] Responsibility for developing and implementing policies to prevent harm of a sexual nature was shared among the General Staff Command Advisor for Women’s Matters through the Equal Employment Office, unit commanders, and adjutant officers.[13] Commanders informed of allegations were required to report them to an adjutant officer or, if one was unavailable, to the Equal Employment Office.[13]

Those procedures included exceptions to forwarding allegations to a commander, including when the complainant requested confidentiality or the commander was the subject of the complaint.[13] An adjutant officer receiving a complaint had to interview the complainant, complete a complaint form, and open a case file.[13] The complainant could then choose whether an investigative officer or the Military Investigative Police would conduct the investigation.[13]

Casualty support developed from a department established in 1948 into a broader system created two years after the Yom Kippur War.[14] The war’s thousands of Israeli deaths and still larger number of wounded soldiers exposed the IDF’s inadequate preparation to assist all affected families and soldiers.[15] The expanded system provided initial care for wounded soldiers, support during families’ early bereavement, and continuing contact afterward.[14][15]

The casualty apparatus described in 2016 included a Casualties and City Officers Branch responsible for the initial stages, including notification; a Family Liaison Branch for long-term support; and the Eitan Missing Persons Branch.[16] Its round-the-clock operations room was located at the main Adjutant Corps base in Ramat Gan.[16] Reports of soldiers’ deaths triggered an alert to the city officer associated with the soldier’s place of residence while casualty notifiers were dispatched.[16]

At that time, 140 trained volunteer notifiers were on standby around the country, with three sent to each family.[16] City officers and notifiers remained with families during shiva, after which a casualty officer assumed responsibility for continuing support.[16] Contact could continue long after the fallen soldier’s peers had completed their own service.[16]

The emergency casualty center gathers and cross-checks initial reports from military units, emergency medical services, hospitals, police, and other sources.[17] It follows individual cases with hospitals and helps verify identities before notification teams reach first-degree relatives of soldiers who have been seriously wounded, killed, captured, or gone missing.[17] Its routine staff of fewer than ten soldiers expands to many hundreds during emergencies, while reservist notification teams remain on call throughout the year.[17]

Reports of wounded soldiers also reach the casualty operations room, whose personnel seek to help soldiers contact their families from hospital whenever possible.[16] For critically wounded soldiers, notifiers are sent to the family.[16] Casualty officers maintain contact as wounded soldiers leave the IDF and enter the Defense Ministry’s rehabilitation process.[16] In 2021, the “One Soul” reform introduced a dedicated branch for accompanying wounded and disabled soldiers and a telephone hotline for casualties and their families, staffed by casualty personnel who conduct in-depth conversations.[14]

The Eitan Unit is responsible for locating IDF soldiers missing in action and maintaining contact with families of prisoners of war, missing soldiers, and soldiers whose burial places are unknown.[15] The broader casualty system also undertakes memorialization and assistance to wounded and disabled soldiers and their families.[14] In July 2026, the IDF announced that Pvt. Yaakov Zarihan, killed on April 20, 1948, during the War of Independence, had been identified as buried in a mass grave at the Harel Brigade Cemetery in Kibbutz Kiryat Anavim.[18] A special investigation team formed in 2024 used document analysis, witness interviews, soil analysis, and archaeological surveys; Adjutant Corps Chief Brig. Gen. Edna Ilia informed his family of the findings.[18]

The corps combines support for individual soldiers with the personnel administration required for unit readiness and emergency mobilization.[1] Its presence within units gives commanders access to personnel specialists while providing soldiers with a link to higher command.[3][6] The post-Yom Kippur War development of the corps included both staffing growing formations and providing more specialized assistance to soldiers who faced difficulties in service.[6]

Its casualty responsibilities extend that institutional connection beyond active service, through support for bereaved families and assistance to wounded soldiers entering rehabilitation.[14][16] Locating missing soldiers and maintaining contact with their relatives are also continuing responsibilities of the casualty system.[15] The 2017 shift toward a unified point of contact for soldiers’ needs placed broader individual care alongside the corps’ established administrative functions.[2]

Changes to the corps’ emblem reflected this emphasis on personnel care.[4] The original design placed an open book and cassette beneath a sword entwined with an olive branch, representing staff work in combat support.[4] The sword and olive branch also represented the duty to defend Israel’s residents and the state’s commitment to pursuing peace, while the open book symbolized concern for the individual soldier.[1] In 2012, three human figures replaced the book and cassette, while the sword, olive branch, and original blue-and-white colors were retained.[4]