The Radar Mirage: Why Trump Halted NY Offshore Wind

BREAKING (Dec 22, 2025): The Trump administration has announced plans to halt offshore wind leases for already-under-construction projects, just three days before Christmas. This latest move comes despite a September federal court ruling that found similar actions “arbitrary and capricious.”

Executive Order 14120, signed on January 24, 2025, attempted to decapitate the renewable energy ambitions of the Northeast. By invoking the “Preserving Maritime National Security” clause, the Trump administration sought to halt construction on Empire Wind 1 & 2 and Sunrise Wind, citing debunked fears that rotating blades create a “wall of static” blinding coastal defense radars.

However, the courts saw through the smoke. As of September 22, 2025, a federal injunction lifted the stop-work orders, allowing construction to hesitantly resume. Yet the damage is done, and today’s announcement signals the administration is doubling down. The order froze 4 gigawatts of capacity, enough to power 2 million homes, and forced developers like Equinor to book $763 million in impairments. Beneath the headline of “National Security” lies a failed but costly act of political sabotage, one that ignores established physics and proven mitigation technology.

The Hook: Sabotage by Executive Fiat

On June 12, 2025, the Department of the Interior (DOI) attempted to formally revoke the construction and operations plans (COPs) for the Empire Wind project. The justification was singular and absolute: Radar Interference.

The claim was that the 300-meter-tall turbines, located 15 miles off the coast of Long Island, created “unacceptable gaps” in NORAD’s ability to detect low-flying cruise missiles. This was intended as a hard stop for the industry. But in Equinor v. DOI (decided Sept 2025), the court found these claims “arbitrary and capricious,” noting that the Pentagon had already signed off on mitigation plans years prior. The administration’s argument was not a valid security concern; it was a bureaucratic fiction designed to bankrupt a sector.

The Physics of the Problem: Doppler vs. Turbines

To understand why the administration’s argument was scientifically flawed, it is necessary to examine how Pulse-Doppler radar works. These systems do not just “see” objects; they measure velocity. The fundamental Radar Equation governs the return signal strength ($P_r$):

$P_r = \frac{P_t G^2 \lambda^2 \sigma}{(4\pi)^3 R^4}$

Here, $\sigma$ represents the Radar Cross Section (RCS). A modern offshore turbine tower is a massive steel cylinder with an RCS larger than a Boeing 747. However, the primary issue is not the tower but the blades.

The Doppler Clutter Effect

Defense radars filter out static objects like islands or buildings by ignoring zero-velocity returns. But wind turbine blades move. Specifically, the tips of a 15MW turbine blade spin at speeds exceeding 180 mph. The Doppler shift frequency ($f_d$) is calculated as follows:

$f_d = \frac{2v}{\lambda}$

When a radar beam hits a spinning blade, it receives a frequency shift that mimics a slow-moving aircraft or a drone. With 100 turbines, there are 300 spinning blades creating a chaotic “clutter” zone on the receiver screen. The administration falsely claimed that a low-flying cruise missile could fly through this wind farm, hiding in the magnetic noise. This “shadowing” effect is a solved problem in modern signal processing, yet it was presented as an insurmountable wall.

The Technical Solution: Why the “Gap” is a Myth

The order willfully dismissed decades of mitigation technology. The Department of Defense (DOD) has known about turbine interference since the Cape Wind debates of 2010. In 2024, a joint study by the DOD and NOAA concluded that “Gap Filler” radars and advanced signal processing could mitigate 96% of the interference issues.

The TMY-3 Gap Filler System

The primary solution ignores the physics of line-of-sight entirely by placing eyes inside the interference zone. The TMY-3 is a localized, short-range radar system designed to be mounted directly on the offshore substations or even the turbine platforms themselves.

Unlike the massive Long-Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) systems on the coast, these units operate at higher frequencies (X-band or Ku-band) with lower power, specifically tuned to look “under” the clutter. By networking these sensors into the broader NORAD grid, the wind farm transforms from a blind spot into a sensor array. The data from inside the farm is fused with the coastal feed, effectively erasing the noise. The UK and Denmark have successfully implemented similar “in-fill” strategies for years without compromising their air defense capabilities.

AI and Advanced Signal Processing

Modern radar processing no longer relies solely on raw analog returns. Machine learning algorithms can now distinguish the predictable, periodic sinusoidal signature of a rotating blade from the linear, accelerating trajectory of a missile. A turbine blade’s Doppler signature is constant and rhythmic; a missile’s signature is directional and aggressive. By updating the software filters on existing coastal radars (replacing the 1990s-era “Moving Target Indicators”), the “clutter” becomes easily filterable background noise.

Contextual History: The Pattern of Obstruction

This ruling cannot be viewed in isolation. Donald Trump has publicly despised wind turbines for decades, famously fighting a legal battle against a wind farm near his golf course in Scotland. The selectivity of the enforcement exposes the hypocrisy.

• Gulf of Mexico Oil Rigs: Thousands of steel structures dot the Gulf, creating significant radar occlusion. No halts were ordered for these assets.
• Texas Onshore Wind: Massive wind farms operate near sensitive military bases in Texas. They continue to generate power without federal intervention.
• Court Vindication: The September 2025 injunction confirmed that the “National Security” claim was applied unevenly, specifically targeting projects in New York and New England.

The “Security” claim served as a powerful executive tool to bypass standard regulatory review. But the courts intervened, recognizing it as a pretext to dismantle an industry the administration had promised to target. While the legal battle continues, the piles are being driven once again.

Economic Devastation: The Supply Chain Shock

The impact extends far beyond the developers. The “kill notice” on Empire Wind has stranded a global supply chain that was months away from deployment.

The Floating Steel Graveyard

Equinor had already contracted specialized Wind Turbine Installation Vessels (WTIVs) for the 2026 installation window. These ships, which cost upwards of $500,000 per day to charter, are now in limbo. The monopiles (massive steel foundations manufactured in specialized yards) sit rusting in staging ports in Albany and Paulsboro.

This disruption destroys the business case for domestic manufacturing. The Biden administration’s push to build “Made in America” turbine components relied on a steady pipeline of projects. With EO 14120, the demand signal has flatlined. Factory plans in New Jersey and Virginia are being shelved. Why would a steel manufacturer invest $200 million in a monopile facility if the President can void the customer’s contract with a single signature?

The Ratepayer Crisis

New York’s grid is now facing a severe deficit. The state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) mandates 70% renewable energy by 2030, a goal that relied heavily on Empire Wind’s 2GW contribution.

With this capacity erased, New York faces a severe capacity shortfall by 2028. The region is likely to see three major consequences:

1. Life Extension for Peaker Plants: Old, dirty gas plants in Queens and Brooklyn, scheduled for retirement, will be kept online to prevent blackouts. This directly contradicts the environmental justice goals of the CLCPA.
2. Price Volatility: The sudden contraction of supply will drive up PPA (Power Purchase Agreement) prices across the region. Utilities will pass these costs directly to consumers, spiking rates in an already expensive market.
3. Capital Flight: Developers are actively moving capital to Europe and Asia. The regulatory risk in U.S. waters is now viewed as “uninsurable.”

Conclusion: The Pattern Repeats

The administration claims EO 14120 protects the coast from foreign missiles. But by crippling the energy grid, it exposes the country to a different kind of national security threat: chronic instability, economic attrition, and dependence on aging infrastructure.

The radar interference is a solved engineering problem. The hardware exists, the software exists, and the allies use it. Yet despite a federal court ruling in September that found the administration’s actions “arbitrary and capricious,” today’s announcement (December 22, 2025) confirms the goal is not to see the missiles, but to stop the blades.

The timing is deliberate. Announcing a lease halt for under-construction projects three days before Christmas means thousands of energy workers will be told their jobs are at risk during the holidays. Meanwhile, the already-built portion of Vineyard Wind saved New Englanders $2 million per day in energy costs during the recent cold snap.

The 4GW of lost power is not a casualty of war, but of politics. And as the lawsuits mount, the factories close, and the courts continue to rule against these actions, the only clear winner is the status quo of fossil fuel dependence. The administration has made its choice: ideology over engineering, politics over physics, and obstruction over energy security.