alt Hacker NewsTo be fair, there could absolutely be national security issues. One example might be undersea (or even surface) navigation. If the coastline is littered with windmills off shore, this might create a negative of submarine navigation routes. That's clearly information we don't want shared with adversaries. There might be undersea classified cables. There might be classified sonar stations. It might be hard to detect adversary subs within a windmill field due to extra noise, etc.
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If that were the case, why would they have been granted the leases in the first place?
>To be fair, there could absolutely be national security issues.
Which is precisely why US defence agencies are heavily involved in the permitting and design of these wind farms from the start, to account for these valid issues.
If the US had a normal, rational Administration, then yeah, I'd probably accept the "national security" explanation. But when the Administration claims completing the White House ballroom is a matter of "national security", and Antifa is the current largest threat to "national security", then credibility for these claims is completely lost.
Yeah, especially enemy submarines. A windmill farm presents opportunities for defense: as a platform to mount and power sonar, radar arrays or other early warning systems, the power cables are actual decoys for comms infra, the farm itsrlf is an obstacle for drones and enemy subs.
Are the areas that we are placing windmills regularly navigated by submarines? And wouldn't windmills cause as much, or more, issues for an adversary submarines?
I smell BS.
Sure. We can always imagine an excuse to avoid dealing with the obvious reality. I don't think it's productive though.