Sri Lanka Military Academy - History

History

When the Ceylon Army was raised in 1949, the need arose to recruit and train officers and soldiers of the newly formed army. The Army Recruit Training Depot (ARTD) was therefore formed in Diyatalawa on 6 February 1950 for the purpose of training recruits. The first batch of 114 recruits passed out from the ARTD on 2 June 1950. The ARTD was later named as the Army Training Centre (ATC). But facilities did not exist to train officers, and therefore Officer Cadets were sent to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMA) in the United Kingdom. The first batch of ten Officer Cadets were enlisted to the Army on the 10 of October 1949 and were dispatched to RMA Sandhurst.

Subsequently Officer Cadets were trained at the Indian Military Academy and the National Defence Academy (India), and to a lesser extent the Pakistan Military Academy and Bangladesh Military Academy. Overseas training was not sufficient to meet the growing needs. Therefore, arrangements were then made to train Officer Cadets locally. The first intake of Officer Cadets who were earmarked to be trained at the Army Training Centre, Diyatalawa, were enlisted on 16 April 1968. Since then Officer Cadets were locally trained and commissioned. With the expansion and the growing need to train large numbers of recruits, recruit training was assigned to the respective regiments.

In 1988 due to the expansion of the Army and the need for more Young Officers the ATC was given the responsibility of training only Officer Cadets. With this, the Army Training Centre was re-designated as the Sri Lanka Military Academy with effect from 20 August 1992, and since then it has been totally utilized for training of Officer Cadets. At any one time, five to six hundred Officer Cadets are trained at this institution.