JD Vance Admits Troop Placement Was 'A Huge Mistake' After Husband Of Soldier Killed In Kuwait Confronts Him

US Vice President JD Vance has acknowledged that decisions about troop locations involved a 'huge mistake', after the husband of a soldier killed in an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait questioned him during a televised town hall.

Joey Amor told Vance that mistakes and 'fundamental failures' had preceded the death of his wife, Army Reserve Master Sgt Nicole Amor. The exchange aired during CBS News' Things That Matter town hall with Michigan voters on Saturday, 17 October.

Vance initially said it was the first time he had heard the concerns, before acknowledging problems with troop locations and saying changes had been made. He declined to disclose specific details, citing the risk of giving Iran information it could use to target other service members.

Questions Over the Kuwait Military Site

Nicole Amor was one of six US Army Reserve soldiers killed on 1 March, a day after US strikes against Iran began. An Iranian drone struck a tactical operations centre at Port Shuaiba, a civilian port south of Kuwait City.

Satellite imagery and a US official placed the operations centre approximately 10 miles from Camp Arifjan, a major US Army base in Kuwait, according to the Associated Press.

Joey Amor said his wife had been relocated from the base to a shipping-container-style building about a week before her death. His account raised questions about the circumstances in which the soldiers had been stationed at the port.

At the time, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell described the facility as secure and said it was fortified with six-foot walls. His office did not answer the news agency's questions about what protection those walls offered against a drone attack or which air defences covered the site.

Vance's remarks seven months later acknowledged problems with troop locations, but did not establish which decisions contributed to the deaths or whether any individual would be held accountable.

Vance Faces Questions Over Accountability

'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 told Vance.

He asked how the administration would hold leaders accountable for their decisions and the soldiers' deaths.

'This literally is the first time I've heard of this,' Vance responded, offering to speak with Amor after the event.

He later said: 'There are issues with ... where troops were located that we realized was a huge mistake, and that we could do better on. And we have changed that.'

Vance described Nicole Amor as 'a precious human being who served her country honorably' and said he wanted to understand any failures. He added that information did not always reach him, saying that as vice-president, 'you live in a bit of a bubble'.

He promised to 'figure out what exactly happened and what exactly we can do better', while saying the military had already changed tactics to improve protection against drones.

His response left unanswered which troop positions had changed, when those changes occurred and what accountability measures would follow.

In a separate exchange about fuel prices and the Iran war, Vance said, 'Fundamentally, we are where we are,' and questioned what Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed would do differently. Those remarks were not part of his response to Amor.

The town hall aired ahead of the 3 November US midterm elections. Vance also said there was 'of course' a chance he would not run for president in 2028, without announcing a decision on seeking the Republican nomination.