alt Hacker NewsI looked into this a little because I was curious. I guess the ostensible "national security" rationale (which clearly is not the only reason!) for this is that turbines severely degrade the utility of radar surveillance along the coastlines.
This is particularly relevant for low-altitude incursions and drones.
Now, other large governments (UK) have resolved this in several ways, including the deployment of additional radars on and within the turbine farms themselves.
So clearly this is politically motivated, and they're using what seems to be a real but solveable concern as a scapegoat.
Replies
Seems like "national security" has become a phrase that can be used to circumvent many laws, facts, and balance checks. Just like the word "terrorist." It seems like if these ever get challenged to the Supreme Court the current judges will rule with something like it being at the president's discretion.
So obviously the government can spend some of that $1T military budget on fixing their coastal radar.
I thought Massachusetts just won in court to get their money or construction resumed, wonder if this means they have to go back to court.
Here in Sweden a bunch of offshore wind farm project and even residential PV installations are blocked by the military for unspecified reasons that everyone assumes is that it blocks radar and other signal intelligence.
Even though you can partially work around the issue with better onshore equipment or just placing the stuff on the other side of the interfering equipment it is still a step down from not having any interference in the first place. Especially if you want to keep your listening equipment secret.
Even if it is a pretense, it is pretty obvious that this would allow ship-borne drones to use the wind farms as an effective screen. Putting radar platforms beyond the wind farms that are as capable as the existing land-based radars would be quite expensive in both capex and opex. Some of the existing land-based radars would likely need to be moved, ideally. No one was really thinking about this type of threat a decade ago.
That said, Democrats have also been trying to stop offshore wind farms for years (e.g. Vineyard Wind), so there is probably bipartisan support.
Bringing up a map of wind power deployments tells the story; what you will see is a hot vertical strip in the center of the US. That is where it actually makes sense to deploy windmills, and people will continue to put them there even if subsidies end. It makes sense for the area, the amount of wind, the serviceability of the deployments, etc.
Off shore has always been politically contentious because it's much more dependent on subsidies, it's a battle for/against rent-seeking. One party is in favor of this particular kind of rent-seeking and the other party isn't (they will be in favor of a different kind, no doubt). The subsidies are necessary for these deployments to make financial sense, and if they went away, then it would just be a bad place to put a windmill.
There is no national security issue, there is no real case for energy infrastructure either. This use case needs government money to make sense, and is therefore sensitive to political fluctuations.
The problem is that we have a Congress that cares more about in-group loyalty than they do about idiocy.
Meanwhile, we even have Michael Burry pointing out the obvious: we're losing to China because we're not building up every bit of energy capacity that we can. But, sure, why not just ban windfarms in a location perfectly suited to them:
Yea... I don't trust the motivations, but can confirm that on AA radars looking low (Where you might find UAS or just low-flying aircraft), wind farms show up as clusters of false hits.
> So clearly this is politically motivated
The oil price is too low. Venezuela and now this, it is all part of selling fossil fuels.
Taiwan strait is filled with offshore wind turbines from both sides. This is not an issue for PRC nor Taiwan.
> So clearly this is politically motivated, and they're using what seems to be a real but solveable concern as a scapegoat.
I approve of this, because they were going to come up with an excuse one way or another, but "it's classified" has been a BS excuse that has received far too much deference to cover for all kinds of nonsense going back many decades, and being sufficiently flagrant about it is exactly what it takes to create enough of a backlash to finally do something about it.
These things are also probably really loud if you happen to have a sensitive set of sonar buoys. I'm not entirely sure how you solve that one, because putting them in deeper water would also make them less effective.
So clearly this is politically motivated
Trump has been charging at windmills ever since he was defeated in UK courts in a case where he didn't like that wind turbines (that provide enough power for 80,000 homes) could be seen from his golf course.
It's well known ol' Don Quixote doesn't like windmills, I mean wind turbines.
Yep. I worked with France's EDF on their offshore turbines https://www.edf.fr/en/the-edf-group/inventing-the-future-of-... .
This rationale by the U.S. is total BS.
This administration is all about wielding any form of executive power that they can get an unscrupulous lawyer to cook up.
> I guess the ostensible "national security" rationale (which clearly is not the only reason!) for this is that turbines severely degrade the utility of radar surveillance along the coastlines.
Could it be that they just feel that offshore wind infra is difficult to defend militarily?
https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/14/3541/2021/
There is data on what wind turbines do to radar.
I feel like the defense against drones is denser, sharper turbines.
I'd imagine subsurface detection faces issues with the large electromagnetic fields from generation and transmission too.
yes i found that take as well, i also found it interesting that potential for an industrial colony, and early warning infrastructure is undervalued.
Also look at how defensible having your power generation outside your coastline is. This is creating a big vulnerability in your power grid.
Wind seems like a waste of money compared to solar. We aren’t the UK where they are a tiny island holding on.
We have a massive land area on which we can build solar and plug it into existing power lines or build that part out. Probably way more feasible and better power generation results than building wind out in the ocean.
That you could come up with one reasonable-sounding explanation while they offered nothing makes me wonder if the administration is too lazy, or too inept.
[dead]
This administration is entirely founded on lies. Irrespective of any merits, of any, of its actions it has zero credibility.
Result first (kill anything not carbon-based), find rationale later.
Same applies to how this admin forced layoffs at the green energy (hydro + nuclear) behemoth BPA [1] (which was funded entirely by ratepayers, not the federal government) then claimed an energy emergency to keep open coal plants serving the same geographies, coal plants that were already uneconomical and planned for shut down (or re-tooling to gas in the case of TransAlta's plant in WA). [2] Oh and they already re-hired some of the laid off staff at BPA because they overcut.
There is no point in taking these arguments at face value. It's an excuse generated after-the-fact, and in service of one outcome - kill renewable energy.
[1] https://www.columbian.com/news/2025/mar/12/letter-cuts-at-bp...
[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/doe-or...