Tag: radar interference

Offshore wind lawsuit confusion abounds

Recent Court rulings temporarily pausing Administration orders for offshore wind projects to stop construction have created widespread confusion. The orders have not been rescinded merely paused while the Court assesses them. This is the American system at work.

A landscape featuring wind turbines reflected in calm water with mountains in the background under a blue sky with wispy clouds.

From CFACT

By David Wojick

Aerial view of multiple offshore wind turbines in the ocean, with yellow bases and white blades spinning in the breeze.

Recent Court rulings temporarily pausing Administration orders for offshore wind projects to stop construction have created widespread confusion. The orders have not been rescinded merely paused while the Court assesses them. This is the American system at work.

Not surprisingly the confusion begins with the left-wing press.

Politico says “Trump suffers major losses in his war on offshore wind”

Reuters says “…another legal setback for Trump”

PBS says “…handing industry another victory against Trump”

And so it goes.

None of this is true since the stop work orders still stand. All that has happened is that the Courts are going to look at them at the request of the impacted industry. This is standard procedure. It is called a preliminary injunction pending Court review.

Of course, we are disappointed that this is happening but hardly surprised. When the Administration tells an industry to do something it does not want to do it routinely asks the Court to review the order and the Court stays the order pending that review. This is the “balance of powers” in the American system.

In this case the offshore wind industry had some serious arguments that the stop work order was hurting them. So the Administration has to have some good arguments for stopping them, which is what the Court will look at.

On the injury side my personal favorite is from Empire Wind off New York. They had a 3,000-ton steel offshore building coming in on a really big ship from Singapore (with lots of emissions). They needed to install this monster, but the stop work order prevented it. There was no place available on the East Coast with that kind of crane capacity to store it.

This building is where all the turbine cables come together combining their outputs to be sent ashore via the massive export cable. Surely this is a serious new hazard to navigation. Imagine a steel ship hitting it while it was fully charged. Perhaps a cruise liner with a thousand passengers or an LNG tanker. Hopefully the Court is considering this threat.

Dominion Energy had a slightly smaller big problem off Virginia. Their brand-new heavy lift crane ship was gearing up to start installing turbines. Dominion said it was costing $5 million a day to do nothing.

I have yet to see a written opinion on any of the preliminary injunction rulings but some of the quoted Judge statements are interesting. The one most likely to be true is that the Administration needs to be specific for each case.

For example, if radar interference is argued they need to say what interference with which radars and what difference that makes? I suspect the Administration has a bit of work to do here, but maybe not as classified Navy reports have been mentioned.

On the other hand at least one quoted Judge’s statement is seemingly ridiculous. It said the military objections were with wind facility operations not construction. Surely if we do not want operation we do not want construction.

Some of the industry arguments were equally ridiculous. For example that offshore wind was essential for grid reliability. Wind actually degrades reliability because you have to have a reliable generator sitting there ready to ramp up and down as the wind ebbs and flows which is not easy.

Empire Wind actually claimed to power 500,000 homes when it should have said “once in a while” because it requires sustained winds over 30 mph for full power which almost never happens off New York. Maybe ten days a year if that.

The basic point is that we now have standard Judicial review of a major Administrative order. There is no winner or loser at this point. It is the American balance of powers.

Stay tuned to CFACT to see how this actually plays out. Do not depend on the hyperbolically green mainstream press.

A speculation on military risk with offshore wind — AI Submarines

The Trump administration has paused offshore wind construction citing potential threats with these facilities to national security. There is little on the nature of these threats. Having done what, the Navy calls vulnerability assessment of naval bases, I have taken my own whack at it.

Offshore wind turbines in a rough sea under cloudy skies.

From CFACT

By David Wojick

A scenic view of a wind farm with several wind turbines standing in the ocean, illuminated by the soft light of a sunset in a clear sky.

The Trump administration has paused offshore wind construction citing potential threats with these facilities to national security. There is little on the nature of these threats. Having done what, the Navy calls vulnerability assessment of naval bases, I have taken my own whack at it.

My speculative candidate for a really big threat is an autonomous submarine armed with torpedoes or cruise missiles hiding among the giant monopiles. Call it an AI Sub. There is a lot of talk about radar interference, but I am thinking sonar. Spotting this sub with sonar in a big offshore wind facility might be very difficult.

My example is the Dominion Virginia project, for two reasons. First, it lies just off the world’s biggest naval base at Norfolk. This is an obvious target. Second, I have studied this wind facility more than any other.

The Dominion facility is just under 200 square miles covered with about 180 monster monopiles supporting the huge wind towers. Each monopile is a steel tube about 30′ in diameter and extends from the sea floor to the surface. That is a lot of underwater steel spread over a large area.

My conjecture is that sonar will not work well in this forest of giant steel tubes, if at all. Surely the acoustic signal will be heavily scattered. Given that the AI Sub is unmanned, it can be very small, perhaps not much larger than the weapons it carries. It could even stand on end right next to a monopile. There may also be sonar stealth materials available.

Sonar detection of AI Subs might well be impossible. An alternative technology would be a swarm of much smaller AI Drone Subs that attacked and blew themselves up when they reached their targets. These could be even harder to detect.

Getting AI Subs to the offshore wind site could be simple. There are major shipping lanes right next door. In fact, several had to be shifted to make room for the site. A properly configured freighter could drop off the subs as it slowly passed in the night. Thus, their propulsion requirements might be small.

Norfolk home ports a reported 75 warships, including a whopping four aircraft carriers. Successfully attacking this concentration would certainly be a blow to naval operations.

Note that I am not saying this threat is likely. Likelihood is the topic of threat assessments. Vulnerability assessments look for worst case plausible scenarios without regard to likelihood.

The AI Sub threat is certainly plausible. The U.S. Navy and China have both conducted drone sub research and development. See, for example, here for more information.

I do not know what plausible targets lie off of the other offshore wind sites, but no doubt there are some. This includes civilian sites as well as military. Civilian targets might range from interstate bridges to entire cities.

It is up to the Trump administration to carefully assess the threat of tiny AI Subs hiding among the massive steel monopiles of offshore wind facilities. Results might range from banning facilities in certain areas to developing detection and defense systems where development is allowed, if that happens. In some cases, the monopiles are already there. Perhaps they should be removed.

The scale of the AI Sub threat is clearly far greater than the threat of radar clutter. It needs to be taken very seriously.