--- title: "Widower of Soldier Killed by Iranian Drone Presses Vance for Accountability" description: "Vance said it was the first he had heard of the failures and conceded that where troops were placed was “a huge mistake.”" author: "rews desk" published: 2026-10-18T00:46:00Z modified: 2026-10-18T04:49:33Z url: https://rews.cc/a/widower-of-soldier-killed-by-iranian-drone-presses-vance-for-904801 language: en tags: ["trump", "iran", "war", "military", "vance", "us", "mideast"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # Widower of Soldier Killed by Iranian Drone Presses Vance for Accountability *Vance said it was the first he had heard of the failures and conceded that where troops were placed was “a huge mistake.”* By rews desk · October 18, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/widower-of-soldier-killed-by-iranian-drone-presses-vance-for-904801 ## In brief - Joey Amor asked Vice President JD Vance at a CBS News town hall how leaders would be held accountable for his wife’s death - Master Sgt. Nicole Amor was one of six soldiers killed by an Iranian drone at Kuwait’s Port of Shuaiba on March 1 - Vance said it was the first time he had heard of the failures and that he wanted to fix them - Families have questioned the site’s defenses, and defense officials have disputed reports that it was poorly protected - Vance said troop placement had been “a huge mistake” and has since changed, but he gave no details Joey Amor, whose wife was among the first American service members killed in the war with Iran, asked Vice President JD Vance at a CBS News town hall that aired on Saturday how the administration would hold military leaders accountable for her death. Master Sgt. Nicole Amor, 39, an Army Reserve soldier from White Bear Lake, Minn., was one of six people killed on March 1 when an Iranian drone hit a U.S. outpost at Kuwait’s Port of Shuaiba. The United States had begun striking Iran the day before. It is still the deadliest attack on American forces in the war, [CBS News reported](https://cbsnews.com/news/joey-amor-wife-iran-strike-jd-vance/). “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,” Mr. Amor said during the “Things That Matter” town hall, hosted by the “CBS Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil. He said that “my wife has told me things before she passed.” “There’s a failure in the leadership,” he said. “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.” ![A watercolor shows a man viewed from behind holding a military helmet at a polished wooden table, facing an empty high-backed chair.](https://rews.cc/img/f2c3f1fa7aaf6e0a251b63a89633e3c9d8d20279.webp) Mr. Vance called Sergeant Amor “a precious human being who served her country honorably” and said he wanted to hear about any failures. “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,” he said. “I do not want this stuff to happen.” As vice president, he said, “you live in a bit of a bubble” and “sometimes information doesn’t filter up to me.” The questions aren’t new. In the seven months since the attack, families of those killed and wounded have asked whether the military did enough to protect the soldiers at Shuaiba, a commercial harbor the U.S. military uses as a logistics hub. CBS News has reported concerns that the facility wasn’t adequately fortified and couldn’t shoot down incoming drones, that the Army decided against moving troops farther from Iran and that it ignored a request for more medical support. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the drone got through U.S. air defenses and struck a tactical operations center, [according to Task & Purpose](https://taskandpurpose.com/news/military-troops-identified-iran/), which reported that defense officials have disputed accounts questioning how well the center was protected. The attack is still under investigation. ![A drone flies over a coastal harbor with cranes and ships, while sandbag walls surround a small weathered hut on rocky ground.](https://rews.cc/img/6e608307ddfab332823ec42f370623e4790b67fb.webp) All six soldiers belonged to the 103rd Sustainment Command, an Army Reserve unit based in Des Moines. The others killed were Maj. Jeffrey R. O’Brien, 45; Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35; Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert M. Marzan, 54; Sgt. First Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42; and Sgt. Declan J. Coady, 20. Central Command first reported three deaths, and the toll rose to six the next day, when one soldier died of wounds and two more bodies were found in the rubble, [ABC News reported](https://abcnews.com/Politics/pentagon-ids-4-troops-killed-kuwait/story?id=130730693). On Saturday, Mr. Vance said some changes had already been made. Cheap drones that are easy to build have changed warfare, he said, and “we have changed a lot of our tactics to try to suppress that drone fire, to try to protect our troops to make it so that more people don’t have to pay the ultimate sacrifice.” He went further on the outpost itself. “There are issues with ... where troops were located that we realized was a huge mistake, and that we could do better on,” he said. “And we have changed that.” He wouldn’t say what had changed. Mr. Vance, who this month [asked Tehran for a “meaningful” cut in enrichment](https://rews.cc/a/to-end-the-war-vance-asks-tehran-for-a-meaningful-cut-in-enr-e70334) as a condition for ending the war, said he didn’t want to give Iran information “they’re gonna use to target somebody else’s wife or somebody else’s mother.” “But man, I promise you, this is not something I’m gonna forget,” he told Mr. Amor. “And I want to talk to those soldiers, and I want to talk to you to better understand what we can do.”