What Are the 7 Army Values and Their Definitions?

The seven Army Values are Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage. Their first letters spell LDRSHIP, the acronym soldiers memorize early in Basic Combat Training and carry through the rest of their careers.¹ Below are the 7 Army Values and their definitions as the Army itself sets them out in current doctrine, ADP 6-22 (Army Leadership and the Profession).²

The Seven Values, One by One

Each value covers a different piece of what the Army expects from a soldier. Some speak to obligations toward the nation and the institution, others to how soldiers treat each other, and others to personal character. Together they form the standard every soldier is measured against.

Loyalty

Loyalty means bearing true faith and allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, the Army, your unit, and other soldiers.¹ The Constitution comes first in that list on purpose. Army doctrine is clear that a soldier cannot remain loyal to the institution by staying loyal to people who violate it.² Day to day, it looks like supporting a leader’s decision in public after arguing against it in private, standing up for a teammate who is being treated unfairly, and putting the unit’s reputation above personal grievances.

Duty

Duty means fulfilling your obligations. It goes beyond finishing assigned tasks: it asks a soldier to resist shortcuts that would undermine the final product and to treat each responsibility as part of a larger effort the team is building together.¹ Doing the minimum satisfies orders on paper but falls short of the value. Duty asks a soldier to take ownership of the outcome, not just the checkbox.

Respect

The Army’s definition of respect is short: treat people as they should be treated.¹ That means recognizing every person’s dignity regardless of rank, background, or role. Respect runs in every direction in the chain of command. A sergeant who belittles a private violates it just as much as a private who disrespects a commissioned officer. In a force that depends on people trusting each other under extreme pressure, this is the value that holds units together socially.

Selfless Service

Selfless service means putting the welfare of the nation, the Army, and your subordinates ahead of your own.² This is what separates military service from a job. It does not require ignoring personal needs entirely, but when personal comfort and mission requirements collide, the mission wins. Leaders show it by making sure their soldiers eat before they do, volunteering for the hard assignments, and setting aside career-advancing opportunities when the unit needs them somewhere else.

Honor

Honor ties the other six values together. ADP 6-22 defines it as living up to all of the Army Values.² Where the others describe specific behaviors, honor describes the reputation that follows a soldier who consistently gets those behaviors right. It is earned over time and lost in moments. That is why the phrase “on my honor” carries real weight in military culture; it stakes a soldier’s entire professional identity on what follows.

Integrity

Integrity means doing what is right, legally and morally.¹ ADP 6-22 adds that leaders of integrity consistently follow honorable principles and that the Army relies on leaders who are honest in word and deed.² The “when no one is watching” element is what separates integrity from compliance. Compliance is following rules because someone is checking. Integrity is following them because a soldier’s character will not allow anything else. In a force where lives depend on accurate reports, honest maintenance logs, and truthful after-action reviews, a single lapse can have fatal consequences.

Personal Courage

Personal courage means facing fear, danger, or adversity. Army doctrine identifies two forms: physical and moral.²

Physical courage is what most people picture: overcoming the fear of bodily harm to accomplish a mission. It is the bravery that lets a soldier advance under fire or pull a wounded comrade to safety.

Moral courage gets less attention but matters just as much in day-to-day service. It means standing firm on principles even when doing so is unpopular, professionally risky, or personally uncomfortable. Reporting a superior’s misconduct, admitting a mistake that could end a career, or pushing back on an unethical order all take moral courage. So does taking responsibility for a decision when things go wrong and being willing to look critically at yourself and change what needs changing.

How the Values Fit With the Soldier’s Creed and Warrior Ethos

The Army Values do not stand alone. They are written directly into the Soldier’s Creed, which every soldier memorizes and recites. The Creed includes the line: “I serve the people of the United States, and live the Army Values.”³

Inside the Creed sits the Warrior Ethos, four lines that distill the combat mindset:⁴

I will always place the mission first.
I will never accept defeat.
I will never quit.
I will never leave a fallen comrade.

The Warrior Ethos translates the broader values into a combat-specific commitment. Placing the mission first reflects Duty and Selfless Service. Never leaving a fallen comrade embodies Loyalty. The Creed and the Ethos give a soldier a verbal contract to carry into every situation, from garrison to deployment.

Why the Values Have Real Weight

These are not just slogans on a training-room poster. Failing to uphold them can bring punishment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and demonstrating them shapes evaluations and promotions.

Several UCMJ articles map onto specific values. Duty connects to Article 92, which covers failure to obey lawful orders or regulations and dereliction of duty, with punishment as a court-martial may direct.⁵ Respect has its own punitive article: Article 89 makes it an offense for any service member to behave disrespectfully toward a superior commissioned officer.⁶ Honor and Integrity are reinforced through Article 133, which makes “conduct unbecoming an officer” a punishable offense for commissioned officers, cadets, and midshipmen.⁷ Article 134, the “general article,” reaches all conduct that prejudices good order and discipline or brings discredit upon the armed forces, and often captures value violations that do not fit neatly into a more specific article.⁸

On the evaluation side, Army Regulation 623-3 identifies character as the foremost leadership requirement and names the Army Values, empathy, warrior ethos, and discipline as critical attributes that apply across all grades, positions, and specialties. Character receives its own rating block on the Noncommissioned Officer Evaluation Report. Meeting the standard means completing a rating period without certain serious violations, but leaders who demonstrate exceptional character can earn above-standard ratings that set them apart in a competitive promotion environment.⁹

Putting the Values to Work

Knowing the seven values is the easy part. Applying them when two seem to conflict, or when the right choice carries a personal cost, is harder. The Army’s ethical decision-making framework reduces to two questions: “Do the rules allow me to take this action?” and if so, “Should I?”¹⁰

The second question is where the values do their real work. Something can be technically legal and still corrosive to trust, discipline, or cohesion. Leaders are taught to push past “Is this legal?” and ask “Is this prudent?” and “Would my action cause a reasonable person to question the integrity of how we do business?”¹⁰ The values act as the filter for that judgment. A decision that satisfies Duty but violates Integrity is not a good decision. One that honors Loyalty to a friend but undermines Selfless Service to the unit is not either. When the answer still is not clear, the final step is simple: ask someone. Seeking guidance is treated as sound judgment, not weakness.

1
U.S. Army. Army Values
2
U.S. Army Doctrine Publication. ADP 6-22 Army Leadership and the Profession
3
Army.mil. Soldiers Creed – Army Values
4
Army.mil. Warrior Ethos – Army Values
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 USC 892 – Art 92 Failure to Obey Order or Regulation
6
Defense.gov. Uniform Code of Military Justice
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 USC 933 – Art 133 Conduct Unbecoming an Officer
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 USC 934 – Art 134 General Article
9
Army University Press. Evaluating Character
10
DoD Standards of Conduct Office. Ethical Decision Making