John Daniel Caine
What role did Dan Caine play on September 11, 2001?
How did Dan Caine become the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?
What is the history of Dan Caine’s nickname?
What was a significant military operation that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine was involved in during his tenure?
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On the morning of September 11, 2001, John Daniel Caine was one of four military pilots who took to the skies over Washington, D.C., with one mission: Take down any commercial planes that entered the airspace around the nation’s capital. Already an F-16 fighter pilot who had been given the call sign “Razin Caine” because of his surgical air strikes, Caine would go on to become the nation’s highest-ranking military officer as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the second administration of U.S. Pres. Donald Trump, offering military advice on operations including the arrest of Venezuelan Pres. Nicolás Maduro and the war in Iran.
- Birth date: August 10, 1968
- Education: Virginia Military Institute, bachelor’s degree in economics (1990); American Military University, master’s degree in air warfare (2005)
- Best known for: Serving as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the second administration of Pres. Donald Trump
- Family: Caine married Erin Colleen Carty in 2003; they have two daughters.
- Quotation: “It’s about being willing to protect and defend this nation and to work alongside incredible professionals who are equally willing to go to the mat in defense of our nation,” Caine said about his September 11 mission.
Early life
John Daniel Caine was born in upstate New York to Catherine Johnston Caine and Steve Caine. His father was a teacher who dreamed of becoming a pilot. He left teaching and was commissioned as a U.S. Air Force pilot in 1970. The younger Caine also aspired to become a pilot, joining what he called “the family business” during a 2025 interview on The Afterburn Podcast. After graduating from the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) with a bachelor’s degree in economics, Caine got his wish.
Military career
Caine’s military career began in 1990 when he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Air Force Reserve Officers’ Training Corps at VMI. In 1993 he completed the Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training Program as a distinguished graduate. When budget cuts reduced Air Force personnel, Caine made the unusual move of joining the Air National Guard, where he would have the opportunity to continue flying rather than take a ground-based position with the Air Force. By the time of that sunny September morning in 2001, he was an elite combat pilot. In a 2023 video for the CIA, he recalled his thinking that day:
I remember telling the wingman that I was going to fly with that day, “Don’t shoot anybody. I’ll make the decision,” because I was very mindful that if we made a mistake or if we got it wrong or if we missed somebody and we did not shoot, the consequences of that could be catastrophic, not only for the people on the ground, but for the country as a whole.
Ultimately, Caine and his fellow pilots were not faced with that decision. United Airlines flight 93, the last hijacked plane flying that day, was headed toward Washington, D.C., but crashed in a Pennsylvania field when passengers stormed the cockpit.
In 2003 Caine led a project in Iraq to identify and destroy Saddam Hussein’s missile systems. He logged 150 combat flight hours and won numerous awards, including the Distinguished Flying Cross. He also, in 2005, became a White House fellow attached to the Agriculture Department, where he was tasked with understanding the ways in which the administration of Pres. George W. Bush had failed in its response to Hurricane Katrina. It was seen as a huge responsibility for someone with little experience in that type of work. Mike Johanns, who served as secretary of agriculture during that time, never doubted Caine’s abilities, recalling in a 2025 interview with The Atlantic, “He was just so capable.”
Trump first met Caine in 2018 when he was a one-star general in Iraq and Syria directing Operation Inherent Resolve to defeat the Islamic State (ISIS). The president would later recount how he learned of Caine’s nickname after Caine told him that ISIS could be defeated more quickly if the military were given more firepower. He was promoted to a two-star general in 2019 and was awarded a third star in 2021. After returning from the Middle East, Caine served in positions within the National Guard and the CIA before retiring from the military in 2024.
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Serving as chairman of the Joint Chiefs
At the start of his second term, in February 2025, Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr., and asked Caine to serve in the role, promoting him to the necessary rank of four-star general. Confirmed on April 11, 2025, Caine knew that the position would require strong diplomatic skills as well as military expertise. He had learned several lessons from observing Gen. Mark Milley, who was Joint Chiefs chairman during part of Trump’s first term. Milley had argued more directly with Trump about military matters. Caine has taken a different approach, seeking to keep the armed forces from being politicized and to fulfill his role as military strategist and adviser to Trump, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and the National Security Council.
Caine’s strategy has been met with mixed results. In May 2025, for example, Caine privately expressed concern that fighting the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen would use too many military assets needed elsewhere. He helped persuade Trump to reach a ceasefire with the group and withdraw from the conflict. He also disputed the administration’s justification for federalizing the California National Guard to handle anti-deportation protests in Los Angeles, saying in congressional testimony that he did not see them as part of a “foreign invasion.” He has failed in preventing Hegseth from firing or blocking the promotions of many top military leaders in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps.
Caine is regarded as a sober, moderate voice when reporting the results of military operations. When the U.S. struck Iran’s nuclear facilities in the June 2025 12-Day War, Hegseth and Trump announced that the facilities had been obliterated. Caine did not confirm their assessment. Instead he focused on details about the massive 30,000-pound (13,600-kg) bombs used and the skill of the pilots who had flown the bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to Iran and back again. It was later revealed that many of the facilities, while sustaining serious damage, were not destroyed.
In late 2025 Caine gave Trump detailed plans for the highly successful operation to extract Pres. Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from Venezuela. In early February 2026 Caine expressed concerns about initiating a war with Iran, pointing out the risks of a long-term conflict without offering guidance on the advisability of going to war. He also reportedly warned about the potential for Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz, although news reports questioned whether the administration had properly prepared for the political and economic impact of such a move. During congressional testimony in May 2026, Caine continued to differentiate the roles of political and military leadership. When asked whether victory had been achieved against Iran, the general replied, “Only political leaders decide victory or defeat.”