Everything you said about the current state of the Navy's mine countermeasures capability is wrong. Not a little wrong. Completely, embarrassingly, dangerously wrong....
"The four ships we had dedicated to doing this we just decommissioned." The Avengers in Bahrain... Devastator, Dextrous, Gladiator, Sentry. Wooden-hulled ships from the 1980s. Ships that were pushing 40 years old. You know what replaced them? Three Independence-class Littoral Combat Ships... Canberra, Santa Barbara, and Tulsa… all three already deployed to U.S. 5th Fleet, all three operating in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf right now, today, as you wrote this little rant. Not in San Diego. Not in drydock. In theater. Carrying the most advanced mine countermeasures mission package the Navy has ever fielded.
USS Canberra arrived in Bahrain in May 2025 as the first LCS with a full MCM mission package. USS Santa Barbara is in the Arabian Gulf conducting mine countermeasures operations with unmanned surface vehicles… and, by the way, just made naval history by executing the first-ever at-sea launch of a LUCAS one-way attack drone from a littoral combat ship under Task Force 59. USS Tulsa is right there alongside them. Three ships. In the Gulf. Doing the mission. While you say the Navy "is absolutely not ready for this."
These are fundamentally different platforms. Autonomous mine-hunting sonar… the AN/AQS-20C… towed by unmanned surface vehicles so sailors stay outside the minefield. Airborne laser mine detection systems on MH-60 helicopters. Unmanned influence sweep systems for acoustic and magnetic minesweeping. The old Avengers sent sailors INTO the minefield on wooden boats. The new systems keep them OUT of the minefield using robots... something you call a "downgrade"
And while Santa Barbara hunts mines, she's operating under armed overwatch from A-10C Warthogs out of Jordan… loaded with JDAMs, laser-guided APKWS rockets, and enough firepower to shred any fast boat or drone swarm the Islamic Regime throws at them. The Avengers never had anything like that.
"We lost all of our corporate knowledge." Really? The Navy spent a decade building, testing, qualifying, and deploying an entirely new mine warfare architecture specifically to preserve and advance that knowledge. They trained new crews. They ran operational tests on Cincinnati. They deployed the first operational package on Canberra. The Navy's mine countermeasures technical division ran this transition for years with deliberate overlap between old and new platforms. You lose corporate knowledge when you do nothing. The Navy did the opposite of nothing.
"Now we're running an experiment and it's gonna cost people their lives." Three combat ships, forward deployed in the most contested waters on earth, running mine countermeasures with unmanned systems, protected by close air support, integrated with Task Force 59's autonomous warfare network. That's the most capable mine warfare force the United States has put in the Persian Gulf since 1991.
Yelling "amateur hour" at people while getting the basic facts of the Navy's current force posture completely, demonstrably wrong… while three ships are literally in the water doing the job he says nobody can do… that IS amateur hour.
@philthatremains Only good thing that came out of star wars in recent history was Jedi:Fallen Order/Survivor. Those games actually made lights sabers feel good to use.
@IlhanMN You want to replace the authority of an election with the authority of the mob
Do not listen to any of these people cry about authoritarianism, they're only mad because they're not the authoritarians
hello everyone, I am okay and thank you for all of the kind messages, sorry I cannot respond to them all 🩷
Yesterday, the man who assaulted me was allowed to cross multiple barriers at twitchcon and even in front of another creators meet and greet to grab me and my face and try to kiss me. Fortunately he wasn't able to, but a lot of people have pointed out it could have been a lot worse!
I'm obviously shaken up by what happened and it's not the first time I've dealt with something like this, but to tell you honestly, I am a lot more hurt and upset by how Twitch handled it during and after the fact.
Like I said, I don't understand how he was allowed to make it to me in the first place. The security in the clip who reacts is my own security (it's true my favorite and usual security guard was banned for holding a stalkers arm to bring him to police, at a past Twitchcon)
However, there were at least 3 or 4 other Twitchcon security staff in the area who did not react and let the guy walk away, as you can see in the clip since they don't even appear in the frame LOL
The woman who is walking me away is my own personal manager, and behind the booth, the only two people who were checking on me and comforting me were her and my friend. None of the Twitchcon staff came to ask what happened or if I was okay.
My friend who was present told me Twitch security were also behind the booth afterwards joking about how they didn't even see what happened and immediately laughing and moving on to talking about something else.
So if no one was checking if I was okay or if I needed anything and they let the guy run away initially, I have no idea what anyone hired to keep the event safe was doing LOL
In Twitch's statement they said that the guy was immediately caught and detained, I'm sorry but that is a blatant lie. He was allowed to walk away from my meet and greet and I didn't hear he was caught until hours after he attacked me, and it felt like this only happened because of my manager pressing for it, not because Twitchcon staff present thought it was a big deal.
I have a lot more I want to say but I will say it on stream later today instead of writing a book on here.
Thank you guys again, sorry you all had to see that. This is definitely my last Twitchcon, and it saddens me to say as a 10 year off and on attendee of Twitchcon, I think other creators should seriously consider not attending in the future. I did not feel cared for or protected, even bringing my own security and staff. I can't imagine how creators without those options would feel.
Stay safe y'all, everything is going to be okay
@Awk20000@Timcast What a pathetic loser. He is such a narcissist, he finally gets railed for doing something that even the majority of his own brain dead audience finds fucking vile that he cracks like a bitch and goes full black pill because he cant handle accountability for being a scumbag.
@Nero Kids shouldn't be on the website in the first place, so the blame once again is on shit parents letting their kids have unfiltered access to something they shouldn't.
@Nero I could have vibed with it if it didn't have his signature and KSH on it, just comes across as being more focused on him instead of the "Hey, good job" its supposed to be for the people that earn it.
These are the people performatively weeping and crying on CBS News as ICE drags them off to be deported and your mom and sister are choked up and saying shit like maybe we could have an amnesty
You’re a creepy, offputting faggot with a clownishly repugnant husband polling at zero with blacks because you bought two of them to do God knows what to. Slavery ended 160 years ago—that goes for sex slaves too. Give those children back to their mothers and pick a bridge.
@shoe0nhead I have just started to block accounts with throw away @ handles, most are bots, trolls, crypto scam accounts, or rage bait farms and are pointless to engage with anyway.
@philthatremains He was the only thread that keeping the sword of Damocles that is the rights retaliation from falling, now the left will feel every bit of anger and hate they have subjected everybody else to reflected back at them 10× over.