‘Failure in the leadership’: Husband of soldier killed in Iran drone strike presses JD Vance

MONROE, MICHIGAN: The husband of a US Army Reserve soldier killed in an Iranian drone attack in Kuwait confronted Vice President JD Vance on Saturday, October 17, over military leadership and accountability during a CBS News town hall.

Joey Amor questioned whether the Trump administration would hold officials responsible for what he described as “mistakes” and “fundamental failures” preceding the March 1 attack that killed his wife, Master Sgt Nicole Amor, and five other people.

Vance said he wanted to understand what had happened and promised to examine potential failures.

Nicole Amor’s husband confronts JD Vance over military failures

Nicole Amor, a member of the US Army Reserve from Minnesota, was among six people killed when an Iranian drone struck an outpost in Kuwait on March 1, one day after the United States began its military campaign against Iran.

The attack remains the deadliest assault on US forces during the conflict.

During the town hall, hosted by anchor Tony Dokoupil, Joey Amor said the drone was the immediate cause of his wife's death but argued that other failures had contributed to the attack.

“Though the Iranian drone was the weapon that killed my wife, there were a lot of mistakes and a lot of fundamental failures that led up to that,” Amor said, adding that “my wife has told me things before she passed.”

Amor then directly questioned the administration's willingness to hold military leaders accountable.

“There's a failure in the leadership. And I want to know how this administration is gonna start holding those leaders accountable for the actions and the deaths of the soldiers that we honor and that we love,” he said.

The attack has prompted questions from the families of those killed about whether the military did enough to protect personnel stationed at Kuwait's Port of Shuaiba.

JD Vance promises probe into deadly Iran drone attack

Responding to Amor, Vance described Nicole Amor as “a precious human being who served her country honorably” and said he wanted to determine whether failures had contributed to the deaths.

“Because if there were failures, and I don't doubt there were, I just … literally the first time I've heard of this is this conversation, and I want to fix that stuff. I do not want this stuff to happen,” Vance said.

The vice president acknowledged that information does not always reach him, explaining that “you live in a bit of a bubble” in the role and that “sometimes information doesn't filter up to me.”

Vance pledged to “figure out what exactly happened and what exactly we can do better.”

He also said the military had begun changing its approach to counter the threat posed by drones, which he described as inexpensive and easy to manufacture.

The vice president declined to provide details about the changes, citing concerns that disclosing military tactics could help Iran target other service members.

“Now, I'm not gonna get into the details, because God forbid, I don't want the Iranians to learn something else (that) they're gonna use to target somebody else's wife or somebody else's mother,” Vance said.

“But man, I promise you, this is not something I'm gonna forget.”