Dan Caine

Biography

John Daniel "Razin" Caine was born in Elmira, New York, in 1968, the son of an Air Force fighter pilot. He graduated from Hahn American High School in Germany and in 1990 earned an economics degree from the Virginia Military Institute, where he was commissioned through Air Force ROTC; he later took a master's in air warfare from American Military University.

After pilot training he flew F-16s in the Air National Guard, first with the 138th Fighter Squadron in Syracuse and then the 121st at Andrews Air Force Base, where he flew patrols over Washington after the September 11 attacks. He planned counter-Scud operations for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, was a White House Fellow and a counterterrorism policy director on the Homeland Security Council, and commanded a special operations air task force in Iraq in 2008.

Alongside part-time Guard service he founded an investment firm and co-founded an airline company. He returned to active duty as assistant commanding general of Joint Special Operations Command in 2016, served in the campaign against the Islamic State, directed special-access programs at the Pentagon and, from 2021 to 2024, was the CIA's associate director for military affairs before retiring as a lieutenant general.

In February 2025 President Donald Trump nominated him, though retired, to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Confirmed in April 2025 and promoted to four-star general, he became the first chairman who had not previously held four-star rank and the first from the Air National Guard.