About The Center

The Dado Center is a General Staff HQ whose mission is to develop the IDF's operational art and systemic thinking in order to assimilate them within the IDF, and to assist various IDF bodies - especially major commands - in implementing them.

The Dado Center, under the command of Brigadier General Eran Ortal, consists of career officers and civilian researchers from a range of military and security-related disciplines.

In order to fulfill its purpose, the Center operates in five main efforts:

Development of a general approach for the implementation of the operational-strategic thinking process in a military context.

Training senior leadership in the spirit of the general approach for military systemic thinking: The Dado Center runs seminars for colonels entering positions in the major IDF commands. Today, the Center holds two seminars a year for the IDF's operational staff, and one seminar a year for senior officers in the force design system. Additional seminars are held in conjunction with the National Security College, Command and Staff College, and various units per request.

Support of major command strategic learning processes: The Dado Center assists IDF headquarters, working primarily with Brigadier-Generals and Generals to conduct learning processes whose purpose is to develop new operational-strategic concepts. The Center is involved in processes like the development of a strategy for the northern theater, led by the Northern Command, knowledge development in the Central Command, the development of operational concepts in the Southern Command, the development of future land maneuver concepts in the Ground Forces Command, and more.

Research Center: The Dado Center focuses on research that examines IDF concepts in different periods, assists strategic learning processes, and examines phenomena relevant to the challenges facing the IDF, including cyber, the nature of the Qualitative Military Edge, the strategic and operational planning process, the tunnel threat and the underground realm, and many other issues.

The Dado Center Journal for Operational Art: The journal is a platform for the Center's publications, as well as a platform for IDF officers' and academic researchers' systemic and conceptual writing. DCJ issues are organized around subjects, whose goal is to create a systemic discussion and to expand knowledge in core fields in which the IDF is involved – Frontier Regions (volume 1) , Processes of Organizational Change (volume 2), the Cyber World (volume 3), Military Force Design (volumes 6 and 7), the General Staff (volume 8) and other subjects. DCJ features writing that comes from a critical systems approach, one reflects the Dado Center's proactive agenda.