Exclusive: The Admiral Who Must Prevent War With China

Storyby Sep 24, 2026 12:00 PM UTCSamuel Paparo aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt at Pearl Harbor on July 29, 2026. Photograph by Philip Cheung for TIMEIn the summer of 1986, when he was a college student in Pennsylvania, Samuel Paparo took his future wife Maureen to watch Top Gun.Many young Americans emerged from theaters across the country with a new hero: the brash, daring, risk-taking Maverick, played by Tom Cruise, who became an avatar of American power at the twilight of the Cold War. But Paparo took away a different lesson.“The hero of the movie is supposed to be Maverick, but the hero of the movie is actually Iceman,” Paparo tells TIME, referring to the main character’s rival at the elite Navy pilot training school. “Maverick’s got all the personal charisma, but Iceman is fastidious, quiet. He’s the hard-working guy that does the right thing, that doesn’t do flashy, dangerous stuff for its own sake.”Paparo had already passed the Navy’s entrance exams when he went into the theater that day, and joined the next year. His career would precisely mirror the fictional Iceman’s: He attended the Navy Fighter Weapons School, also known as TOPGUN; became a fighter pilot; then a four-s...