From CFACT

By David Wojick

The Trump administration has paused offshore wind construction citing potential threats with these facilities to national security. There is little on the nature of these threats. Having done what, the Navy calls vulnerability assessment of naval bases, I have taken my own whack at it.

My speculative candidate for a really big threat is an autonomous submarine armed with torpedoes or cruise missiles hiding among the giant monopiles. Call it an AI Sub. There is a lot of talk about radar interference, but I am thinking sonar. Spotting this sub with sonar in a big offshore wind facility might be very difficult.

My example is the Dominion Virginia project, for two reasons. First, it lies just off the world’s biggest naval base at Norfolk. This is an obvious target. Second, I have studied this wind facility more than any other.

The Dominion facility is just under 200 square miles covered with about 180 monster monopiles supporting the huge wind towers. Each monopile is a steel tube about 30′ in diameter and extends from the sea floor to the surface. That is a lot of underwater steel spread over a large area.

My conjecture is that sonar will not work well in this forest of giant steel tubes, if at all. Surely the acoustic signal will be heavily scattered. Given that the AI Sub is unmanned, it can be very small, perhaps not much larger than the weapons it carries. It could even stand on end right next to a monopile. There may also be sonar stealth materials available.

Sonar detection of AI Subs might well be impossible. An alternative technology would be a swarm of much smaller AI Drone Subs that attacked and blew themselves up when they reached their targets. These could be even harder to detect.

Getting AI Subs to the offshore wind site could be simple. There are major shipping lanes right next door. In fact, several had to be shifted to make room for the site. A properly configured freighter could drop off the subs as it slowly passed in the night. Thus, their propulsion requirements might be small.

Norfolk home ports a reported 75 warships, including a whopping four aircraft carriers. Successfully attacking this concentration would certainly be a blow to naval operations.

Note that I am not saying this threat is likely. Likelihood is the topic of threat assessments. Vulnerability assessments look for worst case plausible scenarios without regard to likelihood.

The AI Sub threat is certainly plausible. The U.S. Navy and China have both conducted drone sub research and development. See, for example, here for more information.

I do not know what plausible targets lie off of the other offshore wind sites, but no doubt there are some. This includes civilian sites as well as military. Civilian targets might range from interstate bridges to entire cities.

It is up to the Trump administration to carefully assess the threat of tiny AI Subs hiding among the massive steel monopiles of offshore wind facilities. Results might range from banning facilities in certain areas to developing detection and defense systems where development is allowed, if that happens. In some cases, the monopiles are already there. Perhaps they should be removed.

The scale of the AI Sub threat is clearly far greater than the threat of radar clutter. It needs to be taken very seriously.