Paul K . Van Riper Lieutenant General Paul K . Van Riper ( born July 5 , 1938 ) is a retired officer of the United States Marine Corps . Since retirement Van Riper has served on several advisory boards and panels . He is currently the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation . At the time of his retirement , Van Riper was serving as the Commanding General , Marine Corps Combat Development Command , Quantico , Virginia . Early life . Paul K . Van Riper was born on July 5 , 1938 in Brownsville , Pennsylvania . Marine Corps career . Van Riper enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve and underwent recruit training at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island , South Carolina in the fall of 1956 , joined Officer Candidate Course in June 1963 and commissioned a second lieutenant in November 1963 . In late 1965 , Van Riper served in the Republic of Vietnam as an Advisor with the Vietnamese Marine Corps , being wounded in action and evacuated on February 7 , 1966 . He later served in Egypt , Israel , Lebanon and Okinawa , on the latter commanding the 4th Marines until December 1986 . Van Riper served temporarily as a member of the MARCENT / I Marine Expeditionary Force staff during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm from January to March 1991 . Returning to Washington , D . C . , Van Riper served as Assistant Chief of Staff , Command , Control , Communications , and Computer and as Director of Intelligence from April 1993 until July 1995 . He was advanced to Lieutenant General and assumed his last post on July 13 , 1995 . At this post Lieutenant General Van Riper was an honorary member of the Provost Marshall Office , and spent some of his lunch breaks issuing speeding tickets all across MCB Quantico . Lieutenant General Van Riper retired on 1 October 1997 , after more than 41 years of service . Post - retirement . Van Riper is critical of the current transformation efforts in the military , especially changes originating from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld . He gained notoriety after the Millennium Challenge 2002 wargame . He played the opposing force commander , and easily sunk a whole carrier battle group in the simulation with an inferior Middle - Eastern " red " team in the first two days . To do this , Van Riper adopted an asymmetric strategy . In particular , he used old methods to evade his opponent ' s sophisticated electronic surveillance network . Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to front - line troops and World War II light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications . Van Riper used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of the opponent ' s fleet by the second day of the exercise . In a preemptive strike , he launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces ' electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships . This included one aircraft carrier , ten cruisers and five of six amphibious ships . An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20 , 000 service personnel . Soon after the cruise missile offensive , another significant portion of the opposing navy was " sunk " by an armada of small Red boats , which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on Blue ' s inability to detect them as well as expected . After the simulation was restarted with different parameters , he claimed that the wargame had been " fixed " to falsely validate the current doctrine of the U . S . Navy . He is also critical of post - war Iraq plans and implementation . On April 24 , 2006 , he joined several other retired generals in calling for Rumsfeld ' s resignation . Decorations and awards . General Van Ripers ' s military awards include : He is a graduate of the Army ' s Airborne and Ranger School s .