Leaders must get their soldiers back to tough, realistic training at home station or risk being unprepared for the challenges of combat that lie ahead, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Weimer said.

Addressing dozens of senior sergeants major at the Association of the U.S. Army’s 2025 Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C., Weimer said he has witnessed a decline in fundamental soldier skills at the Army’s combat training centers.

Acknowledging that he’s a “transformation in contact guy,” citing the initiative in which new technologies are put in soldiers’ hands for testing and their feedback, Weimer nonetheless said that all the new equipment could be keeping soldiers from focusing on combat skills.

“I'm noticing the basics are kicking our ass because we're not mastering the basics at home,” Weimer said. “I love the gadgets, but the gadgets are exposing all the things we're not doing well at home station.”

Command Sgt. Maj. Nema Mobar, senior enlisted adviser for U.S. Army Forces Command and a panelist at the professional development forum, said getting soldiers focused on the basics begins with professional military education, known as PME, and the doctrine that underpins “everything we do.”

“The doctrine behind what we do is extremely important, and that's what you get at PME when you go, is to understand the end state and the priorities within the battle drill or whatever it is that you're focused on,” Mobar said. “So, we have to do a much better job as an operational force, getting people to PME … otherwise, it doesn't matter how good the training is, they're just not going to receive the education that they need.”

Another key to building lethal teams through training at home station is good training management practices, as “it’s the foundation and key to everything that we do,” but Mobar said he has seen lapses in training management.

“As I go around the formations, what I hear most often is, we are too busy, the op tempo is just too high, but when I peel back the onion, they're not doing too many operations, they don’t have much going on, they’re just chaotic,” Mobar said.

Leaders should lay out their training priorities, and if there isn’t enough time, consult with higher headquarters to establish priorities.

Mobar also highlighted the value of mentorship down to the lower levels of a formation. “The more time that you spend with your subordinate leaders two levels down, the better training you're going to get, the better your organization is going to run,” he said. “You have to manufacture as many touch points as you possibly can to levels down … and through this, you're going to build a relationship, and you're going to understand strengths and weaknesses, and you'll get feedback from those subordinate NCOs.”

U.S. Army Pacific Command Sgt. Maj. Jason Schmidt pointed out that attention also should be given to individual skills such as land navigation, physical fitness, tactical road marches, the “little things that may not seem grandiose” but that fill up a training calendar and provide a deeper level of knowledge with basic skills.

Schmidt and Mobar promoted the use of virtual trainers and taking the time to understand the capabilities and limitations of their equipment and vehicles instead of just incorporating them immediately into training scenarios.

Describing the Army’s combat training centers as Olympic-level training environments, Weimer said it won’t mean a thing if soldiers don’t train hard at home station before they go.

“We have got to get back and be ruthless with realistic training at home station while we transform for a fight that's not in the future,” Weimer said during his professional development forum. “It's a fight that if we were on the front lines of Ukraine right now, we would already be dealing with.”

— Gina Cavallaro