'Swarm drone attacks': Burgum on reasons for Revolution Wind halt order
The reasons given for ordering a halt to an 80%-built project have left industry leaders baffled and suspicious
US interior secretary Doug Burgum has cited the risk of facilitating “swarm attacks" by undersea drones as a key reason behind the Trump Administration’s stop work order on Revolution Wind, a 704MW offshore wind project that was under construction by Orsted and Skyborn Renewables.
The Trump administration caused outrage across the wind power industry by halting a project that is 80% complete and fully permitted off the coast of Connecticut and Rhode Island.
The order mentioned national security concerns as a justification for the measure, but the administration initially offered limited explanation of the reasoning behind this.
Burgum said that both transportation secretary Sean Duffy and defence secretary Pete Hegseth were concerned about radar interference that the turbines could cause.
Burgum cited recent comments from Duffy in a cabinet meeting who said “there had been a report that had been buried about the fact that a wind farm, if it’s too close to a railroad or a highway, could affect the electronics.”
Given the Revolution Wind is situated many kilometres off the US coast, interference with railway lines and highways would appear to be a remote prospect.
But Burgum said that “in particular, there’s concerns about radar relative to undersea.”
“And it doesn’t have to be a large Russian sub, but undersea drones. The new technology. I mean the war in Ukraine has shown that swarm attacks by drones… if you’re going to launch one into our most populous part of our country, the Pacific northwest… people with bad ulterior motives to the United States would launch a swarm drone attack through a wind farm.”
“The radar gets very distorted,” he added.
Concerns around radar interference are common for offshore wind farms, although the prospect of their leaving a state vulnerable to undersea swarm drone attacks is less so.
Orsted declined to respond to Burgum’s comments.