WHRO whines Dominion’s offshore wind project is one of 5 suspended by the Trump administration
Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project off the Virginia Beach coast is one of five major offshore wind projects around the U.S. whose leases were “paused” today by the U.S. Interior Department, citing unspecified national security concerns. The Interior Department said national security risks were identified in recent classified defense reports.
The Dominion project is the largest of its kind in the U.S., and construction is underway off the Virginia Beach coast. According to Dominion, the federal government ordered a 90-day suspension of work.
“Stopping CVOW for any length of time will threaten grid reliability for some of the nation’s most important war fighting, AI and civilian assets,” Dominion said in a statement. “It will also lead to energy inflation and threaten thousands of jobs.” “Virginia’s grid needs addition of electrons, not subtraction,” Dominion added. “We stand ready to do what is necessary to get these vital electrons flowing as quickly as possible.”
The pause is meant to give the Trump administration, which has criticized wind projects, “time to work with leaseholders and state partners to assess the possibility of mitigating the national security risks posed by these projects,” according to the statement issued by Interior.
“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,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement.
The other projects are Vineyard Wind in Massachusetts, Revolution Wind at Rhode Island and Connecticut and the Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind projects in New York, according to the Associated Press.
Some of the most egregious abuses involve the offshore wind farms that mar some of America’s most pristine seascapes. These projects cost taxpayers billions in subsidies and do grave harm to marine ecosystems. These ocean projects also lead directly to job losses in commercial fisheries, higher electricity rates, and energy output that remains intermittent and unreliable.
These offshore farms also put our national security at risk. Permitted aggressively during the Obama and Biden administrations, these developments pose genuine dangers to U.S. strategic readiness. President Trump should make his Executive Order on Offshore Wind permanent and halt the entire enterprise and commit to canceling these leases outright.
Offshore wind turbines interfere with long-range surveillance systems, particularly the PAVE PAWS network—the Precision Acquisition Vehicle Entry Phased Array Warning System. Located on both coasts, its radar arrays track ballistic missile launches, space objects, and foreign military activity. These systems depend on clear, stable electromagnetic environments. Massive steel turbines—hundreds of feet tall, rotating at variable speeds, and clustered across wide swaths of ocean—create moving radar reflections and clutter that degrade detection and tracking.
The Department of Defense has repeatedly warned that offshore wind can interfere with radar by scattering signals, generating Doppler confusion, and creating false targets. Officials may try to downplay these concerns for political reasons, but the physics do not bend to political narratives. A single utility-scale wind farm poses risks; dozens permitted to be built along the coastline in direct line of sight of early-warning systems pose a systemic threat.
Supporters claim such interference can be engineered away, but no proven technical solution exists. For decades, the Pentagon restricted turbine development near radar sites for precisely this reason. What changed was not the science—it was the pure and simple: green politics.
This vulnerability is magnified by the fact that many of these offshore wind leases are owned or majority-controlled by foreign corporations, including Ørsted, a Danish state-backed enterprise. Foreign ownership does not imply malicious intent, but it does raise an unavoidable question: should the federal government grant long-term access to strategically sensitive maritime territory—used for Navy training lanes, flight paths, submarine navigation, and radar coverage—to companies whose obligations lie outside the United States, all on the taxpayer dime?
I don't know for sure offshore wind power kills whales, but on the other hand, I don't know that they don't either. Just build nukes
