QUANTICO, Va. -- Special Agent Brian E. McCombs, a career investigator whose three decades of service carried him from combat zones in Baghdad to cyber investigations and senior leadership in the Indo-Pacific, passed away July 6 at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Okinawa, Japan. He was 57.
According to his family, the cause of death was a pulmonary embolism.
At the time of his death, McCombs was the Special Agent in Charge of Air Force Office of Special Investigations Det. 624 at Kadena Air Base, where since 2023 he led criminal and counterintelligence investigations across Japan’s Ryukyu and Kyushu islands.
“Brian embodied everything AFOSI asks of a Special Agent,” said Brig. Gen. Amy Bumgarner, AFOSI’s commander and McCombs’ longtime colleague. “As we reflect on this year, it’s clear that he led with courage in combat and compassion for his people, and his influence endures through the Special Agents he trained and inspired.”
A career serving
McCombs’ Air Force career began in 1990 when he was commissioned from the U.S. Air Force Academy with a degree in electrical engineering. Initially a student pilot, he quickly realized the cockpit wasn’t where he belonged.
“He used to joke that he got bored in the air,” said Special Agent Kailan Smith, the senior enlisted leader at Det. 624. “Flying just wasn’t enough of a challenge for him. He wanted something more.”
That “something more” came in 1993, when McCombs joined AFOSI, a move that set the course for the next three decades of his life. He went on to command detachments in the United States, Europe and Asia.
At Royal Air Force Mildenhall, United Kingdom, he guided personnel through the turbulent months following the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Several years later, during the height of Operation Iraqi Freedom, he deployed to Baghdad, where he led AFOSI Expeditionary Det. 2408.
McCombs also held senior positions at AFOSI headquarters and later at the National Cyber Investigations Joint Task Force.
Though not trained as a cyber agent, Smith said McCombs immersed himself in the field and earned certification as a digital forensic examiner and mentored specialists across the command.
In the Pacific
By the time McCombs arrived at Det. 624’s lobby, his reputation had gotten there first.
“Before he ever walked through the door, we’d all heard about him,” Smith said. “People kept telling me, ‘You’re going to like McCombs, he’s the real deal.’”
And he was. Although he had commanded detachments on three continents, when he walked into Kadena’s lobby, what caught their eye was the fedora.
“I thought he was somebody’s dad visiting,” Smith said, joking. “Then I realized, no, that’s Mr. McCombs. The hats were kind of his thing.”
The fedora broke the ice, Smith said, but McCombs’ impact came in what followed. He became a steady hand for a detachment shaken by turnover, had a mentor’s patience for young investigators and quickly built a culture that felt like family.
“From the beginning, he was about building that family mentality,” Smith said. “That’s exactly what we needed, and that’s what he gave us.”
But that spirit was soon tested. Like in 2024, when Okinawa was hit by a surge of synthetic drugs, hidden in vape canisters and funneled through the mail.
Japanese authorities later announced eight Airmen were suspected of importing the drug MDMB-4en-PINACA, a potent cannabinoid designed to mimic marijuana. Customs officers first spotted the shipments, setting off a joint investigation by Japanese narcotics officials and AFOSI.
“Brian was instrumental,” Smith said. “He brought back that old-school experience, showing us how to run drug cases the way AFOSI did decades ago.”
That experience stretched back to his earliest days in the field. Fresh out of the Academy, he still looked young enough to be mistaken for a teenager, so AFOSI sent him undercover at Department of Defense Education Activity schools during drug cases.
“He used to laugh about it, like it was like 21 Jump Street,” Smith said, referring to the television show about youthful-looking undercover police officers who investigate crimes in high school.
Legacy of mentorship
Stories like that showed McCombs’ humor, but colleagues said what truly defined him was the way he balanced intensity with compassion.
“He was like a firecracker,” said Special Agent Dana York, a longtime colleague who succeeded him at Kadena as the Special Agent in Charge. “Sometimes you didn’t know what you were going to get, but it was always for the mission and the people. He made sure our voices were heard.”
York first worked for McCombs more than two decades ago, when McCombs led a specialty squadron at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland. Even then, York said his mentor gave agents freedom to investigate and backed them when they took risks.
“He was definitely about the mission,” York said, “but just as much about the people.”
That mentorship continued through years and assignments. Like when York was weighing a move near the end of his active-duty career, McCombs encouraged him to take roles where he could mentor others.
Later, after York retired, it was McCombs who called and offered him a path back into AFOSI as a civilian cyber agent.
“He saw the value in people,” York said. “Not every leader goes out of their way like that, but Brian always did. And he didn’t just invest in us, he educated himself. He wasn’t a cyber agent, but he learned what we were doing and why, so he could lead us better.”
Their careers came full circle this year. The two were preparing to swap jobs, York moving into Kadena while McCombs took over York’s role at AFOSI 5th Field Investigations Region in Germany, when McCombs died.
Now, York sees his new role at Kadena, in his mentor's old seat, as a continuation of his friend’s legacy.
“He set the groundwork for me to succeed,” York said. “I know the unit respected him, and I feel 100% comfortable stepping into this role because he spoke so highly of me. That was just who he was, someone who paved the way for others.”
Retired Col. Vasaga Tilo Jr., who served alongside McCombs as both an Air Force officer and later a civilian, also remembered him as a leader who always stood up for people in the field.
Tilo first worked with McCombs in 2005, when McCombs was a newly promoted lieutenant colonel, and again years later when both were civilians in AFOSI. Tilo, who currently serves as the AFOSI Futures and Strategy associate director, he said one memory stood above the rest.
While deployed, “my unit desperately needed an open-source cyber and social media capability to help us understand the community we were working in,” Tilo said, of a time in the Middle East. “No one else would touch it, there was pressure from his higher-ups to leave it alone due to other priorities. But Brian stepped in. He didn’t care about the risk to his own reputation; he cared about the people in the field and the mission. He and his team built that capability for us, and it made a difference.”
For Tilo, the example spoke to McCombs’ character as someone willing to take risks, not for recognition, but to support those on the front lines.
“That’s who Brian was,” Tilo added, “Someone who always stood up for the tactical operator, no matter the obstacles.”
York and Tilo are among many whose careers were shaped by McCombs.
Among them is Special Agent Gabrielle Morgan, whose Officer Training School application McCombs helped guide before his death. She learned she had been accepted just a week later and is scheduled to commission in early 2026.
“Helping Gabrielle with her OTS package was one of the last things he did, and when she got selected after he passed, it meant a lot to all of us,” Smith said. “That’s part of the impact he leaves behind.”
According to Morgan, his example will shape her own career.
“In the short time I had the pleasure of knowing Mr. McCombs, he was always supportive of my personal and professional goals,” she said. “He consistently presented me with opportunities for growth and development as a person and a leader. It is because of him that I know what kind of leader I want to be.”
Beyond the job
Education and discipline also ran through McCombs’ life. He earned two master’s degrees, one in economic crime from George Washington University and another in security studies from the Naval Postgraduate School.
In addition, he completed advanced professional military education and pursued specialized training ranging from the FBI Double Agent Operations Course to Krav Maga instructor certification. He also held black belts in Bujinkan ninjutsu and judo, disciplines he studied partly under instructors in Japan.
If McCombs’ professional life was defined by duty, his personal life would be anchored by devotion.
He met his wife, Vanessa, in pilot training in Mississippi, and later proposed on Halloween 1991 “without a ring,” as he liked to tell it, and married her the following June 6, a date he never forgot to note was D-Day.
They remained inseparable for the next 33 years.
“She was the love of his life,” Smith said. “If he wasn’t at work, he was with Vanessa. They were always together.”
Colleagues remembered his sunburns after weekends at the Okinawan beaches, his knack for storytelling and the way he insisted on grilling burgers for the detachments he served.
“That balance of mission and people, he never lost sight of it,” York said.
His funeral service was held July 21 in Flemington, Pennsylvania, with military honors and attended by countless colleagues, friends and loved ones.
“Special Agent McCombs was the kind of leader who left every unit stronger than he found it,” Bumgarner said. “His professionalism, courage and care for his people are already resonating across AFOSI.”