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.

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Msurrow 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

The construction on some of these windmill farms started years ago. Before that permits & legal has been in the works for a long time. This surely included security clearances.

The orange shrimp pulling the “national security” card now, on the same day as he also creates a new Greenland debacle, is very clearly simply an attempt to strong arm the danish govt into Greenland concessions (in turn simply to please his fractile lille ego)

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jeltz 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

They were approved before the invasion of Ukraine and before our politicians could see how devestating drones can be. Just because the orange dictator did something does not mean it necessarily was wrong. Even a broken clock is right two times per day.

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ineedasername 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

>"Even a broken clock is right two times per day."

That is incorrect. There are any number of ways in which a clock might be broken such that its hands are not in the correct position even once per day.

	▲	gmac 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Not incorrect so much as underspecified? The phrase more commonly starts with a ‘stopped’ clock, which works more clearly.
	▲	onewheeltom 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Should be “a stopped clock is right twice a day”

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whatsupdog 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> dictator

Can we stop overusing this term? It has already lost it's significance. Every political leader you don't agree with is a dictator nowadays. What kind of shitty dictator he is anyways if he is being shut down by courts left and right, and has to shut down the government waiting for the Congress to approve budget? You do know that dictators don't give a fuck about courts and parliaments?

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jandrewrogers 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This reply doesn't address any core point.

When these wind farms were permitted many years ago, shipborne drones were not part of the threat matrix. It was considered purely hypothetical even a decade ago because it was not an imminent capability for any country even though e.g. the US DoD had studied it. In the last few years shipborne drones have emerged very quickly as a substantial practical threat, largely due to the Russia/Ukraine war. Governments around the world are struggling to adapt to this new reality because none of their naval systems are designed under this assumption.

Whether or not this is convenient for Trump doesn't take away from the reality of the security implications.

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Msurrow 2 days ago | parent [-]

Yes, it does.

First of all: occam's razor. Political theatrics seems simpler than the US defence/intelligence forces sudenly realizing that drones can be launched from ships. Esp. with the timing involved.

Second: Established/traditional radar systems cannot spot drones. Take it from someone living in a country that recently had its airspace violated by (assumingly) Russian drones, affecting national infrastructure. It was considered an attack at the time. I don’t think thats the word we use any more, for political reasons.

Third: Trump already shut down one of these windmill farms once this year. Until the danish company building the park sued and got the courts word that the shutdown was illegal, and resumed construction. The current shutdown has much larger impact for many multi-national companies. Usually there is a political process expected between allied countries before such a drastisc move. We havnt seen that ie no attempt to solve a concrete (security) issue before punching the red button ie probably because there was no motivation for a solution ie the security issue was probably not an actual issue)

Fourth: Earlier this week the danish intelligence services released a new security assesment of USA (that takes Trumps behaviour on the international scene into account). That probably hurt the little mans ego, and now we see a retaliation. This provides yet another motivation for Trumps action, besides factual, real security concerns.

Looking at this purely from the security aspect is naive, and fails to consider the context of the real world.

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bluGill 2 days ago | parent [-]

Before Ukrain everyone though drones were easy to counter. Now that has proven false.

granted Trump probably isn't thinking that, but the concern should be real. We need better drone defense before someone (Russia, Iran...) starts anonymously shooting down airplanes.

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janc_ 2 days ago | parent [-]

That's nonsense. Many countries have been using drones before. (Starting with Nazi Germany during WW 2.)

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bluGill 2 days ago | parent [-]

We have learned counters for them over the years.

Ukraine makes drones vastly cheaper than the current counters and so we can be bankrupted trying the current counters.

	▲	blitzar 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> We have learned counters for them over the years. Using $1m a piece missiles

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2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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