The Trump administration said this week that it will move forward on two onshore wind projects and begin working on other projects waiting for approvals, after long delays by the Defense Department. In court filings, wind companies say the agency has perpetuated delays instead of restarting a review process they were ordered to resume.
On Thursday, the White House said it would unblock two onshore wind projects in Maine and South Dakota in an attempt to pave the way for a permitting reform bill’s passage, Punchbowl reported.
The Defense Department was ordered in August to move projects awaiting approvals forward as part of a lawsuit brought by trade associations, wind energy companies and environmental organizations. In court filings from earlier this week, those groups said the agency is “maintaining its review freeze through new mechanisms” and asked a judge to enforce that order.
The future of these wind projects weigh heavily on ongoing negotiations around the future of American energy infrastructure. A bipartisan group of senators is trying to wrangle votes for a permitting reform bill that could expedite wind-energy development across the country. But the Trump administration’s attempts to block clean energy infrastructure have presented a challenge for some Democrats.
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Earlier this week, the Trump administration’s efforts to reconsider a federal permit granted to an offshore wind farm — the fourth such effort in recent months — renewed those concerns. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), one of the lead negotiators of the permitting bill, said the White House’s moves could derail permitting reform talks.
Whitehouse called the two onshore projects advancing a “start.”
More than 300 wind projects are under review by the Defense Department, a process meant to assess whether energy infrastructure will have an impact on military operations and identify ways to mitigate those impacts. The agency gradually stopped doing those reviews in August 2025.
Lawyers for the Pentagon have asked for the onshore wind case to be dismissed, arguing concerns about national security should take precedence over energy developers’ interests.
Citing drone warfare in Iran and Ukraine, defense officials said a freeze was necessary because of advancing “adversarial capabilities” and global threats. The agency has said it needs to reassess the review process for projects that could cause “impactful Doppler interference,” a category that only applies to wind turbines.
At a hearing in late September, a government lawyer told the judge that reviews for wind projects have resumed but was not able to provide specific examples of projects moving forward. More recently, federal lawyers said the Pentagon has resumed “processing” wind energy applications and began applying a new methodology to “capture emergent threats.”
The groups suing the Defense Department said in court filings on Tuesday that none of the agreements previously negotiated with wind projects have been signed. Instead of signing them, the Pentagon has created a new 119-page mitigation agreement that includes new requirements including vetting personnel and supply chains — an expansion from the roughly 20-page agreement previously used.
The Defense Department did not respond to The Washington Sun’s questions about whether the two wind projects have official, signed agreements that would allow them to move forward.
The new requirements aren’t related to the radar and drone concerns the agency has voiced, the groups argued in their filing.
“DoD is proposing to impose these new requirements across all wind projects, without either identifying which (if any) particular adverse impacts to military operations or readiness warrant their application to individual projects or explaining why the mitigation measures already agreed upon for these projects are inadequate,” the filing says.
The groups asked a judge to force the Pentagon to either sign agreements that had already been negotiated, or provide detailed reasons for not addressing potential adverse impacts on military operations.
For projects in the earlier stages of review, the Defense Department has invited some project developers to negotiate, but wind companies say they have mostly received requests for time extensions.
The review delays have caused some wind developers to abandon or shift their projects, the groups suing the Pentagon say.
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