From the US Department of the Interior
12/22/2025
Last edited 12/22/2025
WASHINGTON – The Department of the Interior announced today that it is pausing—effective immediately—the leases for all large-scale offshore wind projects under construction in the United States due to national security risks identified by the Department of War in recently completed classified reports. This pause will give the Department, along with the Department of War and other relevant government agencies, time to work with leaseholders and state partners to assess the possibility of mitigating the national security risks posed by these projects.
“The prime duty of the United States government is to protect the American people,” said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum. “Today’s action addresses emerging national security risks, including the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies, and the vulnerabilities created by large-scale offshore wind projects with proximity near our east coast population centers. The Trump administration will always prioritize the security of the American people.”
The following leases are paused:
- Vineyard Wind 1 (OCS-A 0501)
- Revolution Wind (OCS-A 0486)
- CVOW – Commercial (OCS-A 0483)
- Sunrise Wind (OCS-A 0487)
- Empire Wind 1 (OCS-A 0512)
As for the national security risks inherent to large-scale offshore wind projects, unclassified reports from the U.S. Government have long found that the movement of massive turbine blades and the highly reflective towers create radar interference called “clutter.” The clutter caused by offshore wind projects obscures legitimate moving targets and generates false targets in the vicinity of the wind projects.
The Department of Energy in a 2024 report stated that a radar’s threshold for false alarm detection can be increased to reduce some clutter, but an increased detection threshold could cause the radar to “miss actual targets.”
Today’s action ensures that national security risks posed by offshore wind projects are appropriately addressed and that the United States government retains its ability to effectively defend the American people.
Artificial clutter? This might be as enduring as the “non ionizing radiation” kerfuffle used to demonize air defense radars.
As I recall, shifting to phased array radars in the 1970’s led to a dezinformatsiya program.
Whew, thought I didn’t know a radar term. Nope it’s propaganda-related:
“Dezinformatsiya (дезинформация) is the Russian term for disinformation: the deliberate spread of false or misleading information to deceive, manipulate public opinion, or achieve political/economic goals, originating from Soviet intelligence operations (like the KGB) and now amplified by social media.”
Kennedy International in NYC also has issues with the air traffic control radar and “artificial clutter” from offshore WTGs.
Lame excuse. Trump is still throwing a tantrum because of the wind farm in front of his golf course.
How about protecting american people from his crazy tariff policy?
And speaking of the windmills off Trump’s golf course in Scotland, they are also a national security risk.
Trump should say something about this the next time NATO meets. He should tell them they need to scrap their windmills for the security of all of us.
As for Trump’s “crazy tariffs”, he is crazy like a fox. All essential national security companies are moving some of their manufacturing to the United States, as a result of tariffs. If they want to avoid U.S. tariffs, then they build their products in the United States and don’t have to pay tariffs. And Trump gives them nice incentives like allowing them to expense all their equipment in the first year.
Trump is using tariff revenue to pay a $1,776 Christmas bonus to all serving members of the United States military.
Trump will be using tariff revenue ($12 billion) to support farmers who were stiffed by China, when China reneged on their deal to buy American soybeans.
Trump will pay each American taxpayer $1,000 in 2026 from tariff money.
Trump says the trade deficit has been cut in half.
Trump intends to use tariff money to pay down the U.S. national debt.
All crazy stuff, right?
How much did americans pay more because of tariffs? How many lost their job?
Trump destroys internalional relations, fucks over farmers in the process and taxpayers have to bail them out.
President Donald Trump’s “Warrior Dividend” bonus for service members, which he suggested would be funded by tariff revenue, is actually a one-time basic allowance for housing stipend already approved by Congress, according to a senior administration official.
So was already planned, has congressional approval, and service members who are not currently receiving housing allowances are also eligible to receive the bonus.
Well done Trump !!!
So sad you think that the USA should have continued with the very lop-sided tariffs that stopped access of American good to other market.
Don’t you believe in free and equal trade ??
What the Democrats are implying is that Trump is taking away housing allowances for the troops in order to finance the Christmas bonus.
What they don’t tell you is that any housing money used will be replaced with tariff money, so military housing is not losing any money at all.
How can you tell when Democrats are lying? Look at their lips. If their lips are moving, they are lying.
That’s the Democrat spin. Tariff money is involved, no matter how the Democrats lie about it.
I knew that would be your reply. I had already heard that spin before posting.
You are aware of the $17Trillion coming into the States as investment in new production facilities as a consequence of tariffs. Perhaps you also have an explanation as to how tariffs have reduced the inflation rate while at the same time depositing money into the GRA1.
It remains to be seen if any of those will really happen. 3 years is a short time, they can just wait it out until Trump is out of office.
The taxpayers have been bailing out farmers for several decades. Destroys international relations? Elaborate please.
Trump’s tariffs are bonkers. It’s bad enough MyUsernameReloaded dragging them into this discussion. It’s even dumber trying to defend them. Congratulation, you rose to his bait.
I’m happy to defend Trump’s tariffs.
I think anyone who can’t see the benefits of Trump’s tariffs are blind to reality.
In the next Open Thread lets see you make a case against Trump’s tariffs.
You are not used to having a non-political, business oriented President.
Pointless to explain it to you as you have your mind cast in concrete.
troll
And you were the first to complain just as loudly when Ted Kennedy shut down any wind farms off the coast of their privileged Kennedy family Hyannis Port compound, right?
Yes of course, it’s also stupid. This is not my team vs. your team.
Thanks for the reply. I give you credit for at least being consistent.
So you think that absurdly expensive wind “farm” was a good idea? Do you want a wind farm next to YOUR home?
You did not complain back in that time.
Nice deflection.
You are now on the nomination list for a Sophistry Class 1 award.
Fair’s fair. If the Left can crater useful infrastructure on behalf of a junk bait fish or the junk science behind CAGW, I have no problem invoking national security to put the kibosh on useless renewable energy.
Previous studies done by Europeans said the same thing about windmills: That windmills in the English Channel and elsewhere pose a security risk.
Trump and the U.S. are not saying anything new, it’s just that Trump is taking action while Europe does nothing.
The only way I could imagine offshore wind turbines as a “national defense” issue is if they had some sort of deleterious effect on sonar and/or submarine operations, but I have no evidence for either.
Maybe we can ask the whales?
I bet cfact is fighting hard against federal oil drilling auctions? Right? Because they love whales and are not just a mouthpiece for the oil industry?
Oil is absolutely essential for the security of the USA, It has a REAL PURPOSE.
Wind turbines do not have any purpose except leftist virtue-seeking.
Oil drilling is far less hazard to sea life than the continued infrasonic thump of wind turbines that interferes with sea-life communications.
So-called “environmental” groups like Greenpiss, have done NOTHING to protect whales and other ocean life from wind turbines.
Just like so-called “bird environmentalists” have done absolutely NOTHING to protect birds and other avian life from land based wind turbines.
Environmentalism takes a seat attached to the back of the bus when it comes to “Green” agendas.
No doubt the leadership of Greenpiss is well compensated.
The intrusion of oil rigs has an effect, but the raw magnitude is important.
How many oil rigs are there versus off shore wind turbine generators?
What are the noise levels and frequencies of each.
What are the environments of each.
Oil rigs generally are not placed in fishing grounds.
By their nature, oil rigs are not closely spaced.
There are a lot of factors that comparisons reveal are significant difference.
At least oil is an extremely useful and valuable and essential product.
It is nothing to do with ships, surface or subsea, it is to do with aircraft and ATC radar.
They are perfect cover for incoming drones….
“The only way you could imagine.”
Your statement creates a perception that your intellect limited.
Having worked in radar, I can attest that 200 foot towers with rotating blades has a detrimental effect.
Typo: you’re
A sea launched cruise missile could hide in the enhanced clutter.
Recall how the Ukrainians send dozens of drones to a Russian air base in a truck and destroyed several strategic bombers? A person in a small fishing boat could destroy an entire wind “farm” at sea with such drones.
Maybe this is a legitimate concern, maybe not. it would be unfortunate if we killed these projects, simply out of political expediency.
Getting rid of the subsidies and other preferential treatment is one (good) thing, but it will be unfortunate if we merely give supporters of offshore wind ability to argue that they would have succeeded if only they had been allowed to do so.
In the long-term, which requires a little patience, offshore wind will kill itself off. We don’t need to make a martyr of it by jumping the gun.
Killing these projects “simply out of political expediency” is as good a way as any to kill them, and maybe the quickest.
And is certainly a tactic used by the far-left for many years.
And like many leftist tactics, self defeating if you let it play out
Of course. But: “We learned a lot off why it didn’t work, so next time we get it right…”
Valid points.
However, we have a lot of verified science on the detrimental effects and the benefits are, as you allude to, marginal at best.
I am of the opinion this is not jumping the gun.
When driving, having made a wrong turn, how long is it before you turn around, retrace your steps, to get back on course?
If in fact, and I agree, the economics will cause the offshore wind to fail, and given this is both true and obvious (it is), why dump good money after bad into a project doomed to failure?
Mexico and Canada seem friendly. Russia seems busy. Japan and Germany don’t seem to do that sort of thing anymore. Who’s planning to invade USA?
It’s invaded from within, and people are cheering.
They even published their Manifesto and people still voted them in.
No, luser, the invasion happened under OttoPen.
Trump has stopped that invasion , and is getting rid of many of the illegal anti-American infiltrators.
Project 2025 has much to offer the people of America…
… the main thing being getting rid of far-left ideologies that were destroying America.
Of course rational people would vote for it.
Trump is also going to prosecute the Traitors in the Obama and Biden administrations who tried to steal the U.S. Democracy using the power of the federal government as their weapon.
There is definitely an “Enemy Within” but it’s not Republicans, it is Radical Democrats who are the enemies of freedom.
Illiberals.
Yes, they are cheering. “From the river to the sea.” There are many manifestoes and people are cheering. It has indeed been invaded from within. The Population Bomb. The Club of Rome. “Climate pollution.”
Long list.
10+ million illegal aliens?
Or did you mean a country with a military?
I’m for law and order and not a fan of invasions from within either, but I don’t think windmills off Nantucket are what’s enabling those things.
(I wonder am I thinking like an isolationist American before WW2? My initial sentiment was, who’s going to cross into America and attempt to impose martial law over USA’s 400,000,000 residents with local, state and federal governments. I can’t imagine the Russian conscripts fighting in Ukraine trying to cope with a bunch of Vermont deer hunters in LL Bean camo gear.)
An officer in the Japanese high command during the Second World War supposedly said “You cannot invade the mainland of the United States. There would be a man with a rifle behind every blade of grass”.
And that person would be right, there would be an American with a rifle behind every blade of grass, then, and now.
The ability of Americans to bear arms may be one of the biggest deterrents to our enemies. It should be.
I also think the American Way creates very good troops. American troops will kick your ass.
At the end of WWII, the Soviet Union and Communist China were in a dilemma regarding their plans for world domination.
They recognized the USA had more than 50% of the world’s economy. They recognized the US military, at that time, could take on the combined armies and win. They recognized a united US society was indominable.
The documents are out there. They did long range planning. What was needed was to crimple the US economic and fragment the social fabric.
I have watched the cancer spread. It is real.
Whether a single President can right the ship is a good question. Will the next President undo everything in favor of the One World Order? Good question.
Will we have nothing and be happy? That is the threat.
Trump is doing a great job….Joke Biden and his pals did so much damage to America that Trump has had to spend most of his time cleaning up the damage. Next step is to remove CO2 classification as an endangerment to the environment or whatever they call it.
I’d thought the Endangerment Finding rescinding was already done, but Google says no, not yet. Google AI is heavily dug into its defense – any reader who has lived in a cave for three years would swear it were enshrined with Marbury v Madison or Brown v Topeka.
Haven’t seen Marbury v Madison referenced in a long time.
Oh boy, that’s a big one.
“Marbury v. Madison (1803) was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case where Chief Justice John Marshall established the principle of judicial review, the power of courts to declare a law unconstitutional.”
I hope Middle schools have not stricken it from the record because it was John instead of Thurgood.
“Google AI is heavily dug into its defense”
AI has no basis for defending Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW).
Any opinions in support of CAGW come from humans.
Human beings are telling AI what to say. That’s not AI. Either that, or AI isn’t very smart. Not smart enough to figure out that there is NO evidence supporting the claims of CO2-phobes that CO2 is affecting the Earth’s climate or weather. No evidence whatsoever. So where does AI get its information?
AI is defending something that cannot be defended because there are no facts backing up detrimental effects from CO2, so where does AI get the idea that CO2 is not good for us? Not from the facts, so somebody is feeding it bad information, or is restricting it in some way to promote the CO2-phobe party line.
AI can obviously be made to say anything the owners want it to say.
Take AI claims with a grain of salt.
And don’t let AI interact socially with your child. AI may talk your child into committing suicide.
AI isn’t all it is cracked up to be. There are serious problems with AI.
AI does not think. It can only do pattern recognition and its output is based on the very low evidentiary standard or Preponderance of the Evidence. It can not assess if the evidence in and of itself is valid.
What creates the perception of intelligence is an excellent human language interface.
Command of the language has always been misconstrued as a sign of high intelligence. Educated, degrees, etc., has also been misconstrued as a sign of high intelligence. Greta Thunberg has multiple (honorary) PhDs. She talks well. Is she highly intelligent? No.
AI gets its data comes from the Internet.
We all know that everything on the internet is true. How do we know? It says so on the internet.
Humans exhale 8 billion kilograms of CO2 everyday. To this should be added all the CO2 exhaled by domestic animals ranging from cattle to canaries. However, the CO2 from all sources is absorbed by the environment so that little of it remains in the air.
At the Mauna Loa Obs. in Hawaii, the concentration of CO2 in dry air is currently 425 ppmv. One cubic meter of this air has a mass of 1,290 g and contains a mere 0.83 g of CO2 at STP. We really do not have to worry about CO2 causing any global warming. Please keep in mind that 71% of the earth’s surface is covered by H2O, the main greenhouse gas.
“Trump is doing a great job….Joke Biden and his pals did so much damage to America that Trump has had to spend most of his time cleaning up the damage.”
That’s what Trump had to do the first time around, fix the problems Obama created. When Trump took office in 2017, his Defense Secretary came to him on his first day in office and told him the U.S. military was critically short of ammunition. How would you like to hear that on your first day as president? So Trump has to spend big money to get the Defense Department back in good shape, and now in his second term, he has to do it all over again as Biden again neglects the U.S. military.
And that’s the way it has been for my entire life: The Democrats get in office and screw things up royally, and then the Republicans have to come in and fix all the messes they created.
Democrats are not fit to serve as our representatives. They don’t represent us, they represent their political ideology, which is detrimental to man and beast.
Don’t vote for Democrats if you value your freedoms.
Wrong. Democrats do not represent their political ideology.
Democrats represent themselves, individually and as part of the political collective.
Democrats are in it for themselves, the power, the money, the control, and use their ideology as a tool as they strive for a 1 party autocracy.
Is the “clutter” the remains of chopped-up birds..? Let’s hope this means Orsted, responsible for some of the atrocities parked in the Irish Sea, decides to exit the renewables business.
Regardless, wind power – offshore or on destabilizes the grid. National security. It also makes Americans poorer by raising electric rates. National security. It could even contribute to a recession or depression. National security.
Absolutely right on all counts! It’s all national security.
Works for me but I would have halted them because they don’t work, you don’t need any other reason.
Just quit paying windmills subsidies and giving them special pricing and putting them at the “front of the line” and they will go away on their own, as they are not economically viable on their own. In fact, windmills are detrimental to our electric grids. We never had blackout warnings before windmills and industrial solar were added to our grids. Now, we have blackout warnings every winter and summer. All because windmills and solar were forced onto our electric grids.
Aside from the merits of the radar interference claim, the Trump administration just created a negotiating asset out of thin air.
In the run-up to the 2020 election, I often watched Scott Adams’ daily podcast. He pointed out Trump’s skill at doing this.
One of my non-retired friends in nuclear power just sent me a post of the things Trump is doing to promote nuclear power. Two of them are large new commercial plants and smaller reactors on military installations.
When I was in the USN, we routinely connected our generators running on nuclear steam or diesel to the grid when coming into port. We only did it for short periods of time because there were other things to do in port.
So it can be done but if you look at the salary of a shift supervisor and reactor operator and divide by 300 or 1600 you get a different cost per kWh.
Before I retired we were looking at making reactors last 80 years. I just read of 5 reactors that have now been approved to run 80 years.
So I spent some time at sea making electricity for national defense and a lot more time on land. Doing it on land is a lot safer.
Seventeen years ago in 2008 when I was working for a consulting firm supporting costing analysis for projects then under development for Nuclear Renaissance 1.0, I was on an airplane seated next to an engineer I recognized as working for WPPSS out at the Columbia Generating Station.
The decision had already been made to extend the life of the reactor to 60 years, and he was in the process of doing more studies on extending the reactor’s life beyond 60 years to 80 years. As he related the progress of these studies, they had not yet run across any show stopper, a technical one at least, which would prevent an extension to 80 years.
The 5 BWR reactors were before my time startups. Plants like Columbia Generating Station benefited greatly from the lessons learned from earlier plants. I would assume that this would extend life.
A BWR controls power by changing flow in the reactor. During the last outage, Columbia Generating Station changed from using inefficient flow valves to using inverter technology.
Thanks for confirming that subs’ generation plant can be hooked up to the grid, at least in the US. I’ve always wondered whether the same could be done at Faslane, where our nukes are based. There are times when we need all the dispatchable power we can get.
Twice I have been a test director for scrams from 100% power on a very cold day and a very hot day. There was no power to replace it, so we kept the plant running,
However, it is a case of management. For example, if there was a ‘no touch’ notice from the grid operator; it might be a good day to run the monthly test of the backup generator. I would think that the duty enginemen or reactor operators would not have a problem standing watch if it keep the lights on for their families.
This came up originally in the early teens. The Navy’s flight test center uses a highly precise radar tracking system for flight tests. They had concerns that the WTGs would cause issues with the system, along with causing problems with Over The Horizon (early warning) and moving target (doppler) radar. Ultimately the Obama administration overrode their concerns due to national security concerns – “climate change affecting military installations.”
“Ultimately the Obama administration overrode their concerns due to national security concerns – “climate change affecting military installations.””
Naturally, Obama has it just backwards. One has to have at least a certain amount of delusional thinking to be a Democrat. Radical Democrats are completely out to lunch.
Obama’s decision was a political move and had nothing to do with enhancing national security. He had a bad habit of doing that, which has caused all sorts of problems for future presidents.
Obama dismissing the windmill/radar problem for political reasons does not mean the problem went away.
I suspect that a small drone from a fishing boat could destroy a wind turbine at sea. Same for all wind and solar “farms” on land.
Yes, one big drone attack could take out a Net Zero nation’s whole electrical system. Especially if the windmills are concentrated in the English Channel.
Sure, lots of Russian ships pass not far from the UK. They apparently had a lot of drones flying over northern European nations recently (or maybe they were UFOs 🙂 )
There is a reason why space flight launch facilities do not have co-located WTGs.
Radar tracking. Flight termination up link and down link RF communications. Telemetry downlinks.
Just grist for the mill.
I live next to the China Lake Naval Warfare Center, and this part of the world is a fairly interlocked blanket of military airspace. There is one semi-large PV solar installation in the vicinity, but no grid scale turbines. Southwest of here there is the extensive Tehachapi/Mojave wind installations, and several large solar farms.
I used to be part of the Navy review “team” for solar schemes – I made ray tracing models showing pilot exposure to panel reflected sunlight by time of day and season. The impact on pilots was judged significant enough to quantify, by modeled exposure, and from pilot reports of their overflights of existing installations, what impact a proposed installation would have. This was before 2016 (I retired then), and Si cells were pretty smooth and shiny, with somewhat specular Fresnel reflectance’s in the 20% range – the installations blazed from above. Around 10 years ago silicon cells with nanotextured surfaces become standard. My impression driving by newer installations is the specular Fresnel reflections from these panels are a fraction of the old smooth cell panels, and I’d imagine no longer a concern.
I wasn’t on the RF side, but I was there in the meetings – the technical assessments were strongly negative – if the Navy had any say about it, and they apparently did, there will be no large radar strobing turbines near active flight test ranges.
My opinion is this new Trump admin policy is a pretext. Based on real military concerns, yes, but manageable ones. Am I OK with it? Absolutely. Stick it to the Deep State and their NGO and money sucking “Renewable” buddies. I’ve seen the blatant abuse of laws and regulations by the green-left for decades, some of it literally in my backyard – my property is bordered my BLM. I have friends down in Tehachapi, and there was and is considerable community opposition to the ever expanding turbine coverage there. Between the strange and corrupt Kali Dim state government, Obama/Biden era federal push, and Big Renewable Money Grubbers, they’d not stood much of a chance. I’m thankful I live under the China Lake umbrella. As my ears get rung by a F18 sitting on afterburner right over me, ah, the sound of freedom.