Sayeret Golani’s newest soldiers completed their 14-month training program with a roughly three-week final exercise incorporating combat lessons and ending at Mount Hermon’s summit, according to a September 15 IDF website report.
The exercise included 32 team drills. In its final week alone, soldiers covered more than 100 kilometers through the Upper Galilee and Golan Heights, conducting raids and responding to simulated terrorists, explosive devices and casualties.
Capt. A., the unit’s training company commander, described a progression from individual proficiency to squad and team operations. After initial training, soldiers develop skills in urban terrain, open terrain and dense vegetation, attend specialized courses, and complete a four-day, 130-kilometer solo navigation exercise from the Sea of Galilee through the Western Galilee to the Mediterranean.
The squad phase builds coordination and culminates in a roughly five-day march from the Kisra area to Training Area 100. Squad commanders serve as team commanders during exercises across different terrain. Team training revisits those skills with greater complexity and precision. Soldiers also spent several days on operational deployment near Jenin in Judea and Samaria.
Readiness gaps are addressed before the final exercises. One team received an additional dedicated week to improve its team-level performance after falling short of the required professional standard. A centralized scoring system tracks each team’s progress across more than 100 team exercises completed by the end of training.
Each week of the final exercise opened with a simulated terrorist infiltration into an Upper Galilee community. Soldiers had to shift rapidly into an operational mindset, reach the community, stabilize the situation, eliminate the simulated terrorists inside and prevent further infiltrations.
The last week began as Shabbat ended, with soldiers leaving Training Area 100 and advancing through successive exercises and raids toward Mount Hermon. They reached the summit shortly after 5:00 AM on Thursday after a full night on their feet.
Capt. A. said the exercise’s structure and priorities have evolved with combat lessons, including firsthand knowledge of the drone threat passed on by soldiers with combat experience: “Not a single soldier here in the training program has personally experienced that threat, but someone who was there has already taught him.”
Beyond exercise totals, equipment and scores, he identified the central measure of effectiveness: “The answer, in my view, is the ability to carry out all the missions simultaneously, and to the highest possible standard. That is what we measure most in this final exercise.”
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