then Add to Home Screen.
President Donald Trump intends to nominate a recently retired Air National Guard officer to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
If confirmed by the Senate, retired Lt. Gen. Dan Caine would succeed Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. as the U.S. military’s senior officer, according to a Friday evening statement by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The president fired Brown, who had held the post since Oct. 1, 2023, Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the chief of naval operations, and Gen. James Slife, the vice chief of staff of the Air Force, that evening.
Caine would be the first career Guard officer to serve as principal military advisor to the president, defense secretary and National Security Council.
His confirmation would also mean the nation’s three top defense officials would be filled by Guard officers — Hegseth, who reached major in the Army Guard; Michael Waltz, the former congressman and retired Army Guard Special Forces colonel who is now national security advisor; and Caine.
"We look forward to working with another senior Pentagon official who understands the lethality and efficiency the Guard brings to the fight," said retired Maj. Gen. Francis M. McGinn, the NGAUS president. "Our community is ready and willing to play a critical role in implementing peace through strength and supporting the strategy of denial."
Caine began his military career as a full-time New York Air Guard F-16 fighter pilot in 1994, after graduating from flight school at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas. He transferred to the District of Columbia Air Guard in 1998.
He was among the fighter pilots who patrolled the skies over the nation’s capital after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
From 2009 to 2016, he served part-time while building a foundation for a civilian career as an entrepreneur and investor.
Caine returned to full-time service in 2016, holding a series of jobs, primarily in special operations. His last assignment was as associate director for military affairs at the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C. He retired in December.
He is currently a partner at Ribbid Capital, a venture capital firm founded in Silicon Valley, and a partner at Shield Capital, according to his LinkedIn page. He is also on the board of Voyager Space, a space and defense firm, and an advisor for Thrive Capital.
“General Caine is an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a ‘warfighter’ with significant interagency and special operations experience,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
The president first met Caine in 2018 when the general was deputy commander of a special operations task force fighting the Islamic State. The encounter left an impression on the president, who has shared the story multiple times, including at the 147th General Conference & Exhibition in Detroit last summer.
Trump said Pentagon leaders had told him that it would take five years to defeat ISIS. He said he went to Iraq to see why.
“I went there, and I met ‘real’ generals, one in particular, “Razin” Caine,” he told the conference, using the general’s call sign. “Your name is Razin Caine? And he said, ‘Yes sir.’ I said, ‘I love you. This is what I’m looking for! I’m looking for Razin Caine.
“We sat down and we had a meeting,” Trump continued. “I said how do we beat these guys? ‘Sir, we can do it quickly. Four weeks,’ [Caine said]. What? ‘We can do it in four weeks, sir.’”
The president said Caine explained they needed to use temporary airfields closer to ISIS strongholds, otherwise the missions were long-distance. The problem was the Pentagon was reluctant to fly from some places due to a lack of support from the local population.
“I asked what would he do? He said, “Well, I’d leave from seven places, and we’ll hit them from the left and we’ll hit them from the right and we’ll hit them underneath and from the top. We’ll hit them so much they won’t know what the hell is happening, sir. And in four weeks we’ll do it, sir.” And that’s what it took.
“I tell that story sometimes because I just want to say we have an unbelievable military when we have the right leader,” Trump concluded.
Caine does not meet the position’s prerequisites, such as being a combatant commander or service chief, as laid out in a 1986 law. The law, however, does allow a president to waive those requirements.
But his nontraditional background may be a source of strength, Chris Miller, who served as Trump’s last acting defense secretary, told The Associated Press.
“He’s spent time as a citizen-soldier,” Miller said. “The guy’s been out, done other things. He brings a perspective that is not traditional for a chairman, which I think will be a breath of fresh air.”
— By John Goheen
