Vince McMaximus

So you're here today because, according to you, you went to another world, for like 2 months, and when you came back, your girlfriend was dead That's right Joe Brogan And this had nothing to do with shrooms Nothing, Joe That's wiiild. So what happened? I'll tell you, Joe

If these boys were on that island, #OperationMuscleThunder wouldn't have went down like it did.

@eigenrobot @NavyDigi Navy/MC does not have the ability to do amphibious landing in robust anti ship middle environment. I say again cannot be done. Major issue, decades in the making. Even if they were in theater today, they would not be landing. Cursory look at news tells the conditions not met

@eigenrobot @NavyDigi An ARG afloat is a liability. You’d have to defend it AND your carriers AND fight on the offense. We don’t really have the assets to do all that at once effectively. Should we? Sure. But that’s a problem going back decades. Also plain fact is MEUs cannot do contested landings

that the marines weren't already in theater, and are taking two weeks to show up, seems to suggest that their use wasn't considered in the initial game plan and can be understood as a reaction to how things are playing out does that seem right?

@juskom95 @BrainLeakage03 Lol… Dang, you got a whole pond? Here I am carrying it in a plastic bag to throw in a burning pit like a chump. Side effects NOT service related.

@RealVMcmaximus @BrainLeakage03 x.com/juskom95/statu…

Real talk: This is one of the reasons I mostly walked away from fiction, and decided to start writing about my war experiences. There is a massive divide between what civilians perceive as the GWOT, and the actual realities we faced on the ground.

@KateTheLiberal @esrtweet @dela3499 I’m not in total disagreement. Eg: I think the manhandling of Iraqi army with all that Soviet gear in 91 was a major catalyst for the actual timing of the fall of cccp. Re China atm I’d prefer to introduce uncertainty and shape more events. Currently insufficient deterrence.

@RealVMcmaximus @esrtweet @dela3499 You're speaking along a different dimension. Yes, uncertainty in and of itself introduces costs and a margin of error. But in terms of their estimates of your military, you want the mean of that margin of error to be as high as possible so you can extract concessions for free.

This is an extremely important point that I've been thinking about ever since we got an unexpected audit of Venezuela's air defenses. Russian SAM-300s and BUKs, Chinese anti-air radar, all proved completely worthless against U.S. gear and operators. I guarantee you that if you are a Chinese military planner contemplating how to get an invasion army across 100 miles of the Straits of Taiwan, you are shitting your pants right about now. Because you have just learned that if you had tried to bust that move yesterday, your nice shiny new invasion fleet would have gotten absolutely gacked by U.S. airpower and missiles that you wouldn't see coming BECAUSE YOUR FUCKING RADARS DON'T FUCKING WORK. Also, the Soviet anti-air missile designs you cloned turn out to be about as useful as so many busted shopping carts. Some of your guys are going to be saying "That's impossible. The fix must have been in. Air defense must have had orders not to engage." Which is an extremely cheering thought, but... ...isn't that what the Americans would want you to believe? The only thing better than having complete technological dominance of an adversary is having complete technological dominance of an adversary who's been conned into believing it isn't true and walks blithely into getting utterly wrecked by it. Yep. Before this went down I was figuring a very high probability that the Chinese make their move on Taiwan in 2027. Now? I guarantee you that their confidence in their previous risk assessments has evaporated. They no longer know what they'll be facing, and there's a significant possibility that mainland China's domestic air defenses are worthless too. Now I'm going to suggest that you juxtapose two phrases: "thermobaric bombs" and "Three Gorges Dam". A China that's naked from the air has the biggest glass jaw in human history. Now I think there's pretty good odds that the invasion of Taiwan will never happen at all.

@KateTheLiberal @esrtweet @dela3499 I’m arguing that I would prefer to introduce more uncertainty. So my adversary having to spend resources searching for “is their stuff THAT much better or just their intel ops THAT effective” Particularly want them researching this if the answer to first q is yes

@RealVMcmaximus @esrtweet @dela3499 Sure, so the best option is that they have an overinflated idea of your military power.

@KateTheLiberal @esrtweet @dela3499 Not necessarily. If I thought there was 50/50 chance my car was going to blow up next time I start it is a much more complicated decision making process than - Being 100% certain it was going to blow up.

@esrtweet @dela3499 No. That is extremely costly and pointless. It isn't guaranteed the benefit is more than that very high cost. It is worth far more if your adversary knows how much power you have so that you can extract concessions from them FOR FREE.

The implication of denying international law in principle is the degradation of all law from what it is—i.e., a question of reason and therefore objective reality—to a matter of mere force and irrational will.

@josephnollasj @ThxTom90228 Refinement necessary: Principles = always required to apply Difficulty = from feudal systems on, most belligerents could draw a pretty straight line of justification for themselves.

@ThxTom90228 Which of the principles is useless or irrelevant in any situation (you decide) involving use of force?

Catholic Just War Doctrine is more than teaching on war; it answers the question “when is killing justified?” Legitimate authority, right intention, last resort, prospect of success, proportionality, and discrimination are essential principles in *any* examination of killing.

@PPSTX570672 @josephnollasj @ThxTom90228 Which is why Catholic moral theology considers “circumstances” to be a constitutive component of moral action. Eg: abortion is a word that denotes a type of killing. The circumstances of “taking human life” have already been applied to the category of killing.

@josephnollasj @ThxTom90228 habitually abstract form has no means to adjudicate that question. Yet it is the fundamental question. So, yes, ask 10 just war folks, and you’ll often get different and incommensurable answers.

@CastleGrief Came late to the dance. Totally would have backed. Will it be for sale sometime soon?

Arathi Sector, the new scifi game from Castle Grief is in its final 24 hours. Pull the trigger now if the project sounds cool to you:

@jd_sauvage “What’s that? Your comms aren’t working? Man that’s crazy…anyway…”

Yo Joe! Any ADA system is only as good as your radar and CiC net. And radar operators can be stabbed. Or paid with cash. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!

Santa, this is Rudolph. He is one of the most undervalued reindeer in the North Pole. His only defect is he has a red nose.

@HootOwl86 @NotJonMollison “I make a jaunty attack”

@NotJonMollison The one in the back leaning nonchalantly is my favorite

This could be you.

C’mon St Iraneus, Doctor of the Church, Septemus Severus needs the Gospel!!!

Which reminds me…it’s almost that time of year again for the greatest Dickens adaptation of all time!

“We’re better at D&D than Gary” remains undefeated #brosr