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.
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-star admiral; and eventually commanded the Pacific Fleet. But Paparo would go further, taking the helm of the U.S. Pacific Command, the nation’s oldest and largest geographic combatant command, which covers about half of the earth’s surface.
His command is designed to be the immovable object that blocks the unstoppable force of China’s expansionist ambitions in the region. And those ambitions have been stated clearly: Beijing has vowed to bring Taiwan, the self-ruling island that has been politically separate from the mainland since China’s civil war ended in 1949, under its control—by force if necessary. China’s President Xi Jinping has described unification as “a historical inevitability.”
The public face of American military power is, of course, the Commander in Chief. The public voice emanates from the Oval Office and the podium in the White House press briefing room. But behind that power sits commanders like Paparo, overseeing the often hidden and awesome infrastructure that backs up that public face and voice—his command oversees some 400,000 military and civilian personnel, a Pacific Fleet of some 200 ships, including five aircraft carrier strike groups, and more than 1,000 aircraft. He marshals that power in distant oceans, islands, and military bases that most Americans will never see or even think about.
“I’m almost quoting Sun Tzu when I say winning without fighting is the acme of skill,” he says, referencing the Chinese military strategist who wrote The Art of War. “Mission success for me is not to fight and win a war; it’s to provide a deterrent capability so that we never go to war in the first place.”
Taiwanese troops set anti-tank barriers on Tamkang Bridge during drills on Aug. 6, 2026. —Daniel Ceng—Anadolu/Getty Images
What if deterrence doesn’t work? The U.S. emerged from World War II with its dominance of the Pacific unquestioned, but that may now be changing. Over the past few decades, as China has transformed into the world’s second largest economy, it has been engaged in a historic military buildup. China’s defense spending has increased 13-fold over the past three decades, and it now spends more on defense than the next 22 Indo-Pacific countries combined, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a bipartisan Washington, D.C.–based think tank. It has made rapid technological advances in artificial intelligence and fielded several generations of fighter jets. Its navy has grown from a coastal force into something capable of projecting global power, and by hull count it is now the largest in the world.
Paparo need only look out his office window at the turquoise waters of Pearl Harbor to be reminded of the last time U.S. supremacy in the Pacific was truly tested. He describes China’s buildup as “historic” and “an exponential increase in military power, and more specifically, in power projection capability.”
For all of its global ambitions, much of China’s military development has been pursued with one target in mind. U.S. intelligence assesses that China’s Xi has ordered his military to be capable of seizing Taiwan by force by 2027, the centenary of the People’s Liberation Army. The intelligence community’s annual threat assessment, released in March, suggests no invasion is currently planned for next year, but by then, the pieces Xi needs to do so will likely be in place.
Paparo’s job is to convince Xi that the costs of military action will be too much to bear, regardless of what is happening politically on the island. By act of Congress, the U.S. is obliged to sell Taiwan the weapons it needs for its own defense; while it does not require the U.S. to defend the island directly, the commitment could go further to include direct conflict with China. He describes his mission as a delicate balancing act between ensuring that his counterparts know American capabilities well enough to understand the risks of engaging, and protecting its necessary secrets and strategy. “It’s demonstrating credible combat power, demonstrating capability and will, but keeping the crown jewels of the nation that are going to deliver combat success opaque to your counterparts, so that they can’t build a counter for it,” he says.
This theory of deterrence operates on a grand, geopolitical scale, and in much smaller interactions. Paparo recounts a confrontation with a Chinese counterpart over what he describes as an “unsafe” encounter in June 2023 during a transit of the Taiwan Strait in which a Chinese Luyang destroyer cut across the bow of an American ship.
“I’m not going to impugn his own character in it. He’s representing his country. He’s in uniform, and you know, if we do have a fight, him and I might have to shake hands at the end and agree to go to our separate sides,” he says.
The strategy has been partly inspired by Ukraine’s defense against Russian invasion, and its ability to halt Moscow’s advances by turning the front lines of that conflict into a no-man’s-land patrolled by killer drones. Paparo would aim to saturate the Taiwan Strait with cheap, mass-produced precision drones, along with more conventional high-tech missile power, to deny China the ability to land an amphibious assault, or at least significantly delay it.
He continues: “Putting 21st century technological change to work for the United States of America is what that’s about. We need not gain air or maritime superiority of a space; we need only deny its use to aggressors.”
Who would win that conflict is something that is fiercely debated. A 2023 CSIS war game found that the U.S. and its allies defeated a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan in most scenarios, but the costs to the U.S. were substantial: two aircraft carriers, dozens of ships, and hundreds of aircraft, the heaviest American losses since World War II. Those war games were run before the war in Iran depleted U.S. missile stocks.
Sailors assigned to Flag Detail practice folding an American flag aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt. —Photograph by Philip Cheung for TIME
An enormous map of the Indo-Pacific theater lines the wall of Paparo’s office. His desk overlooks a large room adorned with historical Pacific artifacts and gifts given to the admiral and his predecessors: a five-star flag that belonged to General Douglas MacArthur; a barometer gifted to Admiral Harry Harris Jr., who led the command from 2015 to 2018, by China’s Ministry of National Defense. Closer to his desk is a large computer screen showing the positions of every vessel under his command. As he toggles through the ships on the screen to demonstrate the scale of his fleet, he pauses somewhere near the Indian Ocean to press home a point: His command is not merely preparing for war; it is fighting one. “The Iranian frigate was sunk by us,” he says. He is referring to an incident in March, when the U.S.S. Charlotte submarine torpedoed and sank the Iranian navy frigate IRIS Dena in the Indian Ocean as it was returning to Iran from India, where it had taken part in an international exercise. More than 100 Iranian sailors were killed. Paparo’s forces have also helped enforce a blockade of Iran’s coastline and support logistics for the war.
It’s not just about Taiwan and China, either. The North Koreans, he says, “are seeking a nuclear deterrent” and want to present the world with a “fait accompli.” The Russians “have increased their air, missile, and maritime capabilities.”
Few conflicts in the world today do not brush up against the Indo-Pacific theater or impact it in some way. The Iran war and U.S. support for Ukraine have placed severe strain on the resources available to all commands, causing a depletion in the stockpiles for missile defense like the Patriot and THAAD systems, and in long-range ground attack missiles, according to the Pentagon and CSIS estimates.
Those shortages are no secret, but it’s a perilous time to be out of step with the White House and the Pentagon. At least 20 top military leaders, including generals and admirals, have been fired or left their positions since Pete Hegseth became Secretary of Defense at the start of the second Trump Administration. The turmoil culminated in the late August resignation of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who reportedly left his role after clashing with Hegseth over the firings of senior generals and the Secretary’s alleged stymieing of Army modernization efforts in the midst of a U.S. war against Iran.
Paparo, front row, at a gathering of military leaders in Quantico, Va., on Sept. 30, 2025. —Doug Mills—The New York Times/Redux
He has been careful in his public remarks about the impact the war in Iran has had on the readiness of his command. When questioned in the Senate about how prolonged conflict could impinge on his mission, Paparo conceded only that “there are finite limits to the magazine, and I have all the faith in the world that they’re being employed judiciously.”
Ward Carroll, a Navy veteran who flew in F-14s and a friend of Paparo’s for many years, says the admiral’s circumspection is part of his character. “He doesn’t want headlines,” he says. “He’s not out there like some other folks have been, saying Epic Fury was a huge mistake. He may say it in private ... but he’s certainly not going to say it to the media or allow it to be leaked.” Paparo excels, Carroll says, by choosing not to “wade into the food fight that is modern-day media and politics at all.” A spokesperson for Pacific Command declined to comment on Paparo’s private conversations about the Iran war.
“The nature of an operation in the Pacific would be to counter an amphibious invasion. Well, we’ve just not used a lot of anti-ship weapons—we still maintain robust inventories of those,” he says. “And so, while I’m not going to whistle past the problem of the expenditure of munitions, it is our job to charge into the learning, and for us to get better.”
Paparo speaks to sailors aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt at Pearl Harbor. —Photograph by Philip Cheung for TIMEHis mother washed hair in a South Philadelphia barbershop and later worked a makeup counter in a department store. “Neither my father nor his father finished high school. In fact, nobody in my family before me had ever had a university education,” he says. He would later attend Villanova, the Catholic college also attended by the first American Pontiff, Pope Leo XIV. “We make Popes and admirals,” he says of his alma mater.
Paparo’s time leading the Pacific Command is historic not just for the opponent he faces, but also because it coincides with a rapid and dramatic change in the nature of warfare. On one wall of his office hangs a reprint of a TIME cover from May 18, 1942, depicting Admiral Chester Nimitz, the naval commander who led the U.S. to victory over Japan at sea in the Pacific war. Nimitz took command of the Pacific Fleet in December 1941, also at a time of great technological change.
Paparo hopes that he never has to fight the war he has spent so long preparing for, that his plans go untested and passed on to the next commander. In the meantime, he will continue with the quiet work. “Mine is not a heroic story,” he says. “Heroism is service that happens at the unforgiving hour. The best service prevents the unforgiving hour.”
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