The ability to take risks in combat starts with building trust at home station, according to the 75th Ranger Regiment’s command team, who addressed a session on leadership at the Association of the U.S. Army’s 2025 Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C.

Speaking before a group of 70 battalion commanders and command sergeants major selected to participate in the Leader Solarium hosted by AUSA’s Center for Leadership, Col. Kitefre Oboho, commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment, and regimental Command Sgt. Maj. Christopher Masters described a culture of caring, hard training, accountability and excellence in soldiering as the tenets that underpin the trust they have built in their formations.

The values that guide the 75th Ranger Regiment are the same as those that guide the Total Army, said Masters, who explained that those values are demonstrated by people “who show up every day to give their best to the people on their left and right, it’s a commitment to your teammates.”

“They’re the Army standards, we just stay true to them to the best of our ability because that and the Ranger Creed are our center of gravity, and that value we hold is the difference we see in ourselves,” Masters said.

Part of that culture of caring rests on accountability, Oboho and Masters said, emphasizing the importance of doing repetitions and sets over as many days in the field as possible so it’s not unfamiliar when soldiers are in combat.

On his first combat deployment, Oboho said, he was a platoon leader and on a 100-day deployment to Iraq. He and his soldiers carried out 110 raids night and day, a high operational tempo typical for Ranger units.

“That repetition, learning, making mistakes, learning from those mistakes is what made us better,” he said, suggesting that with that relative pace of deployment now gone, leaders need to create time on the calendar to replicate that level of repetition by designing training that’s harder than going to the field on weekdays and spending the weekends at home.

After-action reviews also must be brutally transparent if units hope to build a strong foundational base, because without mastery of the basics of soldiering, there is no way to improve, Masters said.

“There's a time and place where you're motivating folks and giving them an attaboy, but don't sugarcoat your [after-action reviews],” Masters said. “If good units can take feedback and constructive criticism and rapidly turn on that and come out and do better the next time, that's what separates the good units from great ones, because you're not making the same mistakes.”

Masters pointed out that with the nature of the 75th Ranger Regiment’s core mission of doing raids, its soldiers deploy often and on short notice for actions such as Operation Urgent Fury in 1983, Operation Just Cause in 1989 or in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

“Tomorrow you may be in a combat zone that you weren't even expecting, and you don't want to look back and be like, man, I wish I would've known that. I wish I could have chosen to do something a little bit differently,” Masters said. “When that time comes, you realize why it makes sense to be really good, to be brilliant in the basics. So, if you can do it to a standard, if you can do anything to standard, then you'll succeed in any environment.”

— Gina Cavallaro