The Oxford Companion to American Military History

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Academies, Service

Academies, Service

• Overview
• U.S. Military Academy
• U.S. Naval Academy
• U.S. Air Force Academy
• U.S. Coast Guard Academy

Academies, Service: Overview

The primary function of the military service academies is to educate and train professional officers for the nation's standing armed forces.

With the development of modern standing armies and more complex military technology, the modern military academy originated in Western Europe in the eighteenth century, established by royal governments to train younger sons of the nobility or veterans as line officers. Other academies trained middle‐class officers for the technical services: artillery,

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