President Donald Trump’s new nominee for the highest military officer in the land earned his stars through a long storied career ascending the rank and file all the way to being one of Trump’s top allies.
Ret. Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin’” Caine is set to replace Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff pending confirmation by the Senate. Service members who trained, taught and fought alongside him throughout his career told the Daily Caller News Foundation that he is qualified for the role, in character and in capabilities.
James Rennan, former pilot for the 149th Lone Star Gunfighters, joined Caine on a mission to an undisclosed location during the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, with the objective to destroy “SCUD” missile sites. Caine was an instrumental part in the mission’s success, as the pilots were relatively inexperienced with the novel configuration used for the mission, and the F-16’s limitations as a jet.
“That was a pretty complex mission for the F-16. Partially because of our speeds, we were getting used to new targeting pods, night vision goggles, all this kind of stuff. And although most of us were proficient F-16 pilots, very few guys have the discipline to be the resident expert, and it became evident Raisin’ was the smartest guy in the room,” Rennan told the DCNF. “He could hang out on the pro level, very relatable, very friendly, but like when he spoke, he was our subject matter expert on power. SCUD was a mission that none of us had really flown.”
Caine began his military career after training in the Air National Guard, flying in the 138th fighter squadron out of Syracuse Air Force Base from 1994 to 1998. He then transferred to Andrews Air Force Base in the Washington, D.C., area.
“He always kept striving for more and striving for perfection,” Ret. Col. Gary Atkin, Caine’s former flight instructor in Tucson, Arizona, told the DCNF. “There’s guys that sit around the squadron and drink beer, and then there’s other guys that keep trying to do more stuff, you know. So that was Dan. He was working on the test center out in Tucson, going to fighter weapons school, he was always kind of looking for all of these other things.”
After two deployments to Iraq in 2001 and 2003, he joined Tucson Air Force Base in Arizona before returning to D.C. to serve as policy director for Counterterrorism and Strategy under former President George W. Bush.
During Trump’s first term, Caine served as the commanding general of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Special Operations Component in Iraq. Trump said in his announcement on Truth Social that Caine was a “warfighter” that was “instrumental in the complete annihilation of the ISIS caliphate.”
Trump met Caine in Iraq in 2018, which he recalled in a CPAC speech in 2019. Caine reportedly told Trump that he could wipe out ISIS in a week if Trump gave him the proper regulatory approval. ISIS was all but wiped out in Syria and the wider Middle East due to Trump and Caine’s efforts.
After his stint in CENTCOM, he took brief stints as director of the Special Access Programs Central Office in 2019 and special assistant to the Chief of the National Guard Bureau in September 2021. In December that year, he became the associate director for Military Affairs at the CIA, his last posting before retiring in December 2024.
