Articles from The Times 4 February 2008
Wind farms ‘a threat to national security’
Magnus Linklater and Dominic Kennedy
Ambitious plans to meet up to a third of Britain’s energy needs from offshore wind farms are in jeopardy because the Ministry of Defence objects that the turbines interfere with its radar.
The MoD has lodged last-minute objections to at least four onshore wind farms in the line of sight of its stations on the east coast because they make it impossible to spot aircraft, The Times has learnt. The same objections are likely to apply to wind turbines in the North Sea, part of the massive renewable energy project announced by John Hutton, the Energy Secretary, barely two months ago. They would be directly in line with the three principal radar defence stations, Brizlee Wood, Saxton Wold and Trimingham on the Northumberland, Yorkshire and Norfolk coasts.
Giving evidence to a planning inquiry last October, a senior MoD expert said that the turbines create a hole in radar coverage so that aircraft flying overhead are not detectable. In written evidence, Squadron Leader Chris Breedon said: “This obscuration occurs regardless of the height of the aircraft, of the radar and of the turbine.” He described the discovery as alarming.
The findings were the result of trials carried out in 2004 and 2005 but the MoD appears to have toughened its stance more recently. It now objects to almost all wind farms in the line of sight of its radar stations.
The change of policy has prompted fury among developers, who had previously been told that there were no defence implications. They have now written a letter of protest to Mr Hutton and Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, pointing out that millions of pounds of investment are at risk.
The MoD says that Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff, has given a firm direction that radar surveillance capability must not be degraded. It denied that it would make automatic objections, saying: “All wind farm applications are assessed on a site-by-site basis. The MoD is committed to government targets for renewable energy and whenever possible we seek to work with wind farm developers to find a mutually acceptable solution.”
It did, however, add: “We look at whether turbines will be in line of sight, ie, if the radar can see the turbine. If it can, we know there will be an effect as we have evidence from trials. We decide whether line-of-site effect is manageable or not.”
Squadron Leader Breedon said that not only did the turbines create a radar hole directly over a wind farm but there was also a shadow beyond them that prevented low-flying aircraft being detected. He said: “The MoD trial results were alarming as they confirmed a greater impact than that previously thought. This in turn required a more robust approach to wind turbine assessments.”
The British Wind Energy Association said: “This is a very real issue for us, but we are now working with government. We are hopeful of seeing progress on this soon so that we can reach the ambitious 2020 targets for renewable power in the UK.”
The Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform has described the MoD’s protests as holding objections. It has created an Aviation Working Group bringing together the wind energy industry, MoD and Civil Aviation Authority to agree guidelines to solve conflicts.
From The Times
February 4, 2008
Magnus Linklater and Dominic Kennedy
To the team from the Air Warfare Centre, a jaunt to rural Wales to monitor the effect of wind farms on radar should have been a routine and pleasant mission.
Two elderly RAF planes were spared for the experiment and their pilots ordered to do figures-of-eight around some windmills to see if they were visible as dots on screens.
The defence experts discovered an alarming threat to national security from wind farms which now seriously jeopardises the expansion of this mode of green energy. Experts knew that there was a tiny area around wind farms where low lying planes are difficult to see by radar and this exercise was designed to measure the extent of the problem.
One of the team noticed an aeroplane, not part of the experiment, which was flying over the turbines but failed to be picked up on the screens.
The pilots of the Chinook HC Mk 2 and Tucano T Mk 1 were given new orders to fly directly over the Llandinam wind farm in South Wales at various altitudes. The planes became quite invisible. A follow-up experiment confirmed that there is a blind spot over wind farms which makes aircraft undetectable by radar.
The discovery has left ministers with a dreadful dilemma. Britain is relying on a huge increase in wind power to help to reduce carbon emissions and so meet targets to prevent catastrophic climate change. But the defence of the skies has become all the more urgent since 9/11 when terrorists shocked America by commandeering four commercial flights.
President Bush has claimed that the CIA foiled a massacre plot to crash aircraft into the towers of Canary Wharf in East London. If the RAF has to be scrambled to save Britain from such peril, every second of advance warning will count.
The revolution in the Ministry of Defence’s thinking on radar air defence was disclosed by Squadron Leader Chris Breedon in his evidence opposing a new wind farm in North-umbria. “Traditionally, the primary role of the Air Surveillance and Control System has been to detect aircraft approaching the UK from overseas. However, equal, if not more, importance is now given to monitoring UK airspace to detect, track and respond to any aircraft which is giving concern.
“The significance of the low-level radar cover has risen markedly as a result of the terrorist events of September 11, 2001. The MoD is extremely concerned with any proposed wind turbine development which would have an impact on the . . . system.”
Put simply, the operators are less worried about looking for enemy aircraft approaching from overseas. The real threat is over our heads. The full results of the tests remain classified.
Wind farms confuse radar because the turbines are mistaken for planes. They are high and have rotating blades which can mimic the effect of aircraft when detected by radio waves. The British Wind Energy Association says that the existing 165 farms produce enough energy for 1.3 million homes and save 5 million tonnes of carbon a year. Ministers were faced with a choice of disasters to avert. Mass terrorist attack or calamitous rise in temperatures?
The MoD is raising last-minute objections to wind farms at Hexham and Kirkwhelpington in Northumberland, Berwick-upon-Tweed and the Lammermuir Hills in the Scottish Borders, Routh in the East Riding of Yorkshire, Thorney near Peterbor-ough and Ceres in Fife. Campaigners for wind farms are suspicious that the MoD has adopted a hardline policy some time after the scientific evidence was discovered. Experiments which found that radar has blind spots over wind farms were completed in September 2004 and April 2005. In May 2005 the MoD confirmed it had no objections to a proposal for 62 turbines up to 125m high at Fallago Rig in the Lammermuirs. But in March 2007 it objected to a smaller plan for 48 turbines.
The MoD said in documents for a public inquiry: “The [air surveillance system] has received firm direction from the Chief of the Defence Staff on the minimum acceptable surveillance coverage and this informs the objection to the wind turbine development. That directed surveillance coverage is required to undertake counter-terror-ist operations against airborne threats and allow tactical decisions to be taken as situations develop. A degraded or inaccurate picture could delay, or even negate, appropriate actions.”
The blind spots can arise even at long distances from radar stations and the MoD is studying all proposed wind farms in the “line of sight” of their monitors. The ministry declined to say how far the line of sight can be.
Security objections threaten to scupper the new age of wind power. Yet in December the Energy Secretary, John Hutton, announced that Britain wants a 60-fold increase in wind energy by 2020. A new radar system called T102 is due to be introduced in two of Britain’s six monitoring stations – at Trimingham in Norfolk and Brizlee Wood in Northumberland.
The Chief of Defence Staff’s insistence that there must be no degradation of radar cover appears irreconcilable with the country’s energy ambitions. So The Times asked the MoD if it had been given a copy of Mr Hutton’s announcement for advance clearance. A spokesman repli
From The Times
February 4, 2008
Michael Evans, Defence Editor
The emergence of wind farms as an increasingly popular and respectable way of generating alternative energy has presented the Ministry of Defence with an acutely embarrassing technical challenge.
Much to the fury of the energy companies trying to tap into the wind turbine business, the MoD has been slapping objections on planning applications if the locations for prospective wind farms are within range of ground radar stations.
Radars, which play a vital part in ensuring safe flying for the RAF, particularly when the Tornado and Eurofighter/Typhoon pilots are operating as low as 250ft from the ground, already have problems distinguishing between the aircraft and all the “clutter” that spoils a perfectly clear picture.
Even weather-vane cocks on the top of church towers can send confusing images to radars which are being used to plot what is airborne.
Further difficulties could arise when ground radar equipment is being used to distinguish jets flying low at several hundred miles an hour when it is also picking up the rotating blades on 400ft-high wind turbines.
Despite all the technological breakthroughs in recent years, ground clutter — and sea clutter for jet fighters flying over water — create imperfections on the radar screen that have to be interpreted and eliminated by the experts.
They create a “mushiness” on the screen, according to Paul Jackson, editor of Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft. Low-level flying remains one of the most important elements of training for fast-jet pilots, but if wind farms proliferate around the coast they could have a lasting impact on the RAF’s capability in this area, unless a technological solution can be found.
There are about eight ground radar stations around Britain, and in Cumbria the Air Force has its special electronic tactics range at RAF Spadeadam where pilots fly as low as 100ft. The rotating action of wind turbine blades anywhere near this training site could seriously interfere with radars.
The problem for the MoD is that it does not want to be seen to be an obstacle in the way of progress on the renewable energy front.
The ministry has already been taken to task by the energy companies which have accused it of raising planning objections at the last minute after they had spent time and money putting forward their applications.
BAE Systems was awarded a contract by the MoD to try to find a way of mitigating the impact of wind turbines on military and civilian air traffic control radars. The answer will be to devise a software program which can filter out the rotating blades. Radars at sea already have to distinguish between an approaching wave-skimming missile and the turbulent surface of the sea or even a flock of seabirds.
At present, there seems to be an impasse, with the MoD’s heavy hand coming down on one side — although for good safety reasons — and the energy companies on the other, wanting to exploit Britain’s windy shores for the benefit of the nation’s energy supplies.
At least, for once, it’s not a Nimby issue.
From The Times
February 4, 2008
Tilting at windmills was a speciality of Don Quixote, the honourably flawed Spanish man of war. Now the Ministry of Defence appears to be following in the farcical footsteps of Cervantes's fictitious knight. Wind farms, rather than windmills, are raising the hackles. Defence chiefs fear that new-age wind turbines, some of which are hundreds of metres high, will interfere with radar-based air and sea defence systems. It may render them useless.
Although easy to lampoon, national priorities of the highest order are clashing. For the sake of climate change, the Government must reduce carbon emissions. One of the more modest ambitions is that the UK should generate 20 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. It is hoped that at least half the renewable commitment will be met from wind power. This modest target is tough enough.
Climate change obligations sit alongside the Government's basic duty to protect its citizens. Radar stations dotted along the coast of Britain are the first, and sometimes the last, line of defence against assault. Radar has revolutionised warfare, enabling soldiers, sailors and aircrew to see huge distances: round corners, through fogs and in darkness. But the turbines, says the MoD, get in the way. The problem has become acute as wind turbines have joined the mainstream. Onshore wind farms in such places as Norfolk and north Northumberland are at the centre of today's debate. Bigger offshore projects under consideration in places such as the Thames estuary will bring greater difficulties.
There is more than enough at stake to merit swift investigation. Is the MoD exaggerating the risk? Could it relocate radar stations to avoid the interference caused by the wind farms? Should the MoD have foreseen the growth of wind farms and responded by adapting security technology? If wind farms pose a genuine threat, the MoD should surely have sounded the alarm before the situation became critical. It objects to wind farm planning applications towards the end of the process. Those erecting turbines on the moors and shallow seabeds could have changed their proposals had the MoD spoken up earlier.
They still can, and they may have to. But the later the changes, the greater the cost. With money, radar stations could be relocated. Investment could be made in more powerful, or more intelligent, radar. But defence budgets are already stretched. At the same time the economic viability of wind power cannot be taken for granted. Any additional cost reduces the chance that wind will make a meaningful contribution to electricity supply this century.
Supporters of wind energy may be underestimating the seriousness of the damage done to radar signals, and the ease with which problems can be corrected. Not for the first time, they may be guilty of making overambitious claims for the potential of wind power, while countryside champions increasingly rue the way wind farms spoil sweeping vistas. For its part, the Ministry of Defence may be too Quixotic. But this is a genuine conundrum, not a laughing matter. A cost-effective solution must be found quickly. It may be a simple question of coordination and communication. If so, it is high time that different branches of government came together to avoid an unnecessary and potentially damaging conflict