Highest-ranking US military officer coming to T&T tomorrow

The Unit­ed States Em­bassy said Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine will vis­it Trinidad and To­ba­go to­mor­row to meet Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The Em­bassy said the No­vem­ber 25 vis­it will fo­cus on the coun­tries’ long-stand­ing bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship, ef­forts to strength­en re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty, and re­gion­al uni­ty on the need to counter il­lic­it traf­fick­ing and transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Caine is the 22nd Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Unit­ed States’ high­est-rank­ing mil­i­tary of­fi­cer, and serves as the prin­ci­pal mil­i­tary ad­vis­er to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, Sec­re­tary of De­fence Lloyd Austin and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil.

Be­fore be­com­ing Chair­man on 11 April 2025, he served as As­so­ciate Di­rec­tor for Mil­i­tary Af­fairs at the Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Agency. His ca­reer in­cludes a wide range of op­er­a­tional, staff and joint as­sign­ments, pri­mar­i­ly as an F-16 fight­er pi­lot, weapons of­fi­cer, spe­cial op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer and mem­ber of the White House staff.

He was com­mis­sioned in 1990 through the ROTC pro­gramme at the Vir­ginia Mil­i­tary In­sti­tute and holds an MA in Air War­fare from the Amer­i­can Mil­i­tary Uni­ver­si­ty. He has com­plet­ed sev­er­al na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and lead­er­ship pro­grammes, in­clud­ing those at the Har­vard Kennedy School and the Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty Maxwell School.

As a com­mand pi­lot, he has logged more than 2,800 hours in the F-16, in­clud­ing over 150 com­bat hours. Be­tween 2009 and 2016, he al­so served part-time in the Na­tion­al Guard while work­ing as a se­r­i­al en­tre­pre­neur and in­vestor.