The U.S. Department of Defense has apparently decided that the greatest threat to American national security isn’t cyber warfare or geopolitical rivals, but giant, stationary metal pinwheels. In a move that surprises absolutely no one who tracks the federal government’s ongoing crusade against renewable energy, the DoD has put 54 wind projects across Texas on ice. Nationwide, 165 projects are currently stuck in bureaucratic purgatory because the military has blown right past its legally mandated 60-day review deadline to see if the turbines will mess with military airspace or radar. In fact, the Pentagon hasn’t approved a single wind project since August 2025, and they capped things off this past April by casually canceling all scheduled meetings with desperate developers.
Here in Texas, we happen to lead the nation in wind energy, mostly because we have an infinite supply of flat, miserable terrain and wind that could strip the paint off a Buick. But thanks to this regulatory traffic jam, local permits are expiring, supply chains are wrecked, and financing is drying up. The military claims that evaluating these projects is “inherently complex” because they have to balance national security with airspace used by the state’s 17 military flight facilities, including our neighbors over at Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene. Because nothing screams “unstoppable global superpower” quite like being completely foiled by a breeze-powered fan.
Of course, this sudden, paralyzing concern for radar interference has absolutely nothing to do with a broader political obsession with protecting fossil fuels. It is surely a total coincidence that the federal government previously handed a cool $1 billion to a French energy company just to get them to walk away from an offshore wind project and invest in oil instead. Texas leadership is more than happy to play along with this modern-day Don Quixote routine, tilting at windmills with taxpayer money while ensuring we keep burning dinosaur bones until the end of time.
After all, why rely on the relentless, agonizing West Texas wind to power our grid when we can just drag our feet, collect billions in oil money, and pray the lights stay on the next time it freezes?
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