[Captain Walker]

He was asked to resign or be fired for cause, which would have tanked his pension.

I think you're making this up.

He was retired when he took on the role of the commander of the aggressor forces; his pension was already carved in stone.

[Zhang Fei]

[I think you’re making this up.

He was retired when he took on the role of the commander of the aggressor forces; his pension was already carved in stone.]

---

You are correct. I was wrong. Mea culpa. The point stands. Blue force is crippled, while red force is assigned superhuman capabilities. The point is to stress blue force, make its participants think about how to fight on, win, even when the usual overwhelming US superiority is absent.

Van Riper took superhuman to embarrassing levels. Where the rubber meets the road, Iran was unable to sink a single Navy vessel even as its nuclear installations were rubbled. In a backhanded way, Van Riper’s critics proved correct about the limitations of the Iranian military, and not by just a little. For the Iranians not to shoot down a single USAF plane, let alone hole a Navy vessel, is more of a repudiation of Van Riper’s claims than any recitation of the ways in which he made the war game not just irrelevant, but comical.