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BARSTOW, Calif. - The United States military has found a new menace
hiding here in the vast emptiness of the Mojave Desert in California:
wind turbines.

Leah Nash for The New York Times
Workers installing turbines near Arlington, Ore.
Moving turbine blades can be indistinguishable from airplanes on many
radar systems, and they can even cause blackout zones in which planes
disappear from radar entirely. Clusters of wind turbines, which can
reach as high as 400 feet, look very similar to storm activity on
weather radar, making it harder for air traffic controllers to give
accurate weather information to pilots.

Although the military says no serious incidents have yet occurred
because of the interference, the wind turbines pose an unacceptable risk
to training, testing and national security in certain regions, Dr.
Dorothy Robyn, deputy under secretary of defense, recently told a House
Armed Services subcommittee.

Because of its concerns, the Defense Department has emerged as a
formidable opponent of wind projects in direct conflict with another
branch of the federal government, the Energy Department, which is
spending billions of dollars on wind projects as part of President
Obama's broader effort to promote renewable energy.

"I call it the train wreck of the 2000s," said Gary Seifert, who has
been studying the radar-wind energy clash at the Idaho National
Laboratory, an Energy Department research facility. "The train wreck is
the competing resources for two national needs: energy security and
national security."

In 2009, about 9,000 megawatts of proposed wind projects were abandoned
or delayed because of radar concerns raised by the military and the
Federal Aviation Administration, according to a member survey by the
American Wind Energy Association. That is nearly as much as the amount
of wind capacity that was actually built in the same year, the trade
group says.

Collisions between the industry and the military have occurred in the
Columbia River Gorge on the Oregon-Washington border and in the Great
Lakes region. But the conflicts now appear to be most frequent in the
Mojave, where the Air Force, Navy and Army control 20,000 square miles
of airspace and associated land in California and Nevada that they use
for bomb tests; low-altitude, high-speed air maneuvers; and radar
testing and development.

When the developer Scott Debenham told local Navy and Air Force
officials in June that he was working on plans to install a wind turbine
at three industrial locations near the area overseen by the military,
they expressed opposition to all of the projects, saying that even one
additional turbine would interfere with critical testing of radar
systems.

The military says that the thousands of existing turbines in the gusty
Tehachapi Mountains, to the west of the R-2508 military complex in the
Mojave Desert, have already limited its abilities to test airborne radar
used for target detection in F/A-18s and other aircraft.

"We cannot test in certain directions because of the presence of wind
turbines in the Tehachapi area," said Tony Parisi, the complex's
sustainability officer. "Our concern is construction in other areas will
further limit where we can do this kind of testing."

As a result of the military's opposition, Horizon Wind Energy recently
withdrew three project applications in the area. AES Wind Generation
said it found out in May, after nine years of planning, that the
military had objections to its proposal to build a 82.5-megawatt,
33-turbine wind farm.

Mr. Debenham, a former naval officer, said he understood the concerns
but that the military was overstating them. A similar turbine just went
up on a nearby Marine base. "It's standing proof that these single
turbines are not an unmitigatable threat to national security," he said.
(Mr. Parisi said the military was assessing whether the interference
would force it to shut down the base's turbine, which cost $6 million to
install.)

The impact of wind turbines on radar had been a back-burner concern for
years, but it heated up in March, when the Defense Department put a
last-minute halt to the $2 billion, 338-turbine Shepherds Flat wind
project in Oregon out of concern the turbines would impair the
effectiveness of long-range surveillance radar.

The department eventually withdrew its opposition after an internal
analysis indicated the effect on radar would not be as severe as
initially thought and an outside study identified measures that could be
taken to mitigate the interference. However, the Pentagon soon raised
concerns about another wind project in the area, saying it could
interfere with the very same radar.

Mark Tholke, regional director for the wind energy developer enXco, said
that the objections could make wind energy less competitive. "It makes
investors and banks jittery," he said. "They will increasingly view
these as risky projects and push up the financial terms."

Mr. Tholke said three of four wind projects in enXco's current portfolio
have been delayed because of radar concerns. One of the projects has
been reduced in size to 140 megawatts from 250 megawatts to appease a
military contractor worried about radar impacts.

Eliminating turbine clutter on radar is complicated. Part of the
challenge is that many radar systems in use in the United States date
back to the 1950s and have outdated processing capabilities - in some
cases, less than those of a modern laptop computer. While there are
technology fixes to ease interference on these aging systems, it can be
tricky to filter out just the turbines.

On radar, "a wind turbine can look like a 747 on final approach," said
Peter Drake, technical director at Raytheon, a major provider of radar
systems. "We don't want to have the software eliminate a real 747."

The Energy Department says the problem should be solvable through new
technologies. "We are confident that investments in mitigation measures,
including new coatings or materials for wind turbines, alternative
configurations for wind farms, gap-filler radar or software patches, and
investments over time in upgrades to modernize radar systems, will
enable the continued deployment of wind power across the country," said
Jen Stutsman, a spokeswoman for the agency.

But some observers say this piecemeal approach does not go far enough.

"I can't imagine a better example of everyone wanting to do the right
thing and nobody doing it," said Howard Swancy, an aviation consultant
and former F.A.A. official. "We need an infrastructure-size development
plan."

Mr. Debenham just wants his three individual turbines to win approval.
The concerns of the local military have been directed to Washington for
review. In the meantime, millions of dollars in financing and renewable
energy incentives are, well, twisting in the wind.

"I'm in limbo. My customers are in limbo," he said. "Can you tell anyone
in Obama's office?"


Arlene Busch
202-333-1880
Abusch@rosemontseneca.com