BOEM Links Up With US Department of Defense On Offshore Wind
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.
This is the sub-heading.
The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the Department of Defense (DOD) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to support the coordinated development of offshore wind on the US Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).
These three paragraphs give more details of the agreement.
The agreement calls for DOD and BOEM to find mutual solutions that support renewable energy in a manner compatible with essential military operations.
The MoU also requires the organizations to collaborate early in the offshore wind leasing process and maintain regular communication at all levels.
Additionally, the agreement calls for DOD and BOEM to determine what areas should be deferred from leasing to enable the performance of DOD activities on the OCS.
I feel this is a very sensible agreement, as time progress, I’m sure that the co-operation will lead to several joint projects.
- Support boats ensuring safety, like the deal between Ørsted and the RNLI, that I talked about in Ørsted Evolves Long-Standing Partnership With RNLI,
- Offshore structures like electrolysers and substations could have a secondary use as military training facilities.
- Smaller ships, like minehunters, coastguard cutters and fishery protection vessels could go electric and the wind farms could provide charging facilities.
If the United States Navy are hanging around the wind farms, it might discourage Putin’s friends.
Wind farms and the US military could be good neighbours.
Brendan Owens, who is the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations, and Environment, said this.
We will continue to work with BOEM and our other interagency partners, to find solutions that enable offshore wind development while ensuring long-term compatibility with testing, training, and operations critical to our military readiness.
Other nations with large amounts of continental shelf and ambitions to install large amounts of offshore wind like Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the UK could do worse that follow the American strategy.
Should Starbucks Pay More Tax?
As a High Street company I would prefer that they set up a system like Waitrose has done with Community Matters, where local charities are chosen by customers to benefit from a levy on takings.
After all, Governments have a record of wasting our taxes on things that a proportion of us don’t want. We all have our pet hates and mine is probably the money government wastes on defence and computer projects.
SNP Changes Defence Policy
The SNP appears to be changing its defence policy. It all goes to illustrate the difficulties they will face on so many issues.
I’m not against nuclear weapons, but with the threat from a large superpower unlikely, I don’t think we need something like Trident. We perhaps need some some of retaliation weapon like submarine-launched nuclear missiles.
Our New Aircraft Carriers Won’t Have Any Aircraft!
The Sunday Times today says that the two follies of Gordon Brown’s tenure as Prime Minister won’t have any aircraft, as the new F35C, that have been chosen by the Coalition, can’t land on a carrier. There’s more about the F35C’s problems here. To be fair to the Coalition, they had little choice but to go for the C variant, after the B variant, which had a limited vertical take-off and landing capability, was not performing well in test flying.
Perhaps though we’ll come up with a better solution, given that the British public won’t support another Iraq or Afghanistan. We’ve also proven that for operations near home, such as Libya, that we don’t need carrier-based aircraft. In addition, we’ve also proven that attack helicopters can work very well off ships like HMS Ocean. Perhaps we need another ship like this one, which was built at a small fraction of the propsed cost of one of the new aircrsft csrriers.
Scot Nats Sink Prudence’s Aircraft Carriers
It looks like Prudence’s jobs bribe to Scotland of the manufacture of two unnecessary aircraft carriers has been sunk by the performance of the SNP in the elections yesterday. Labour voters have deserted the party in droves.
I watched the most unusual double act this morning on the television when Alex Salmond of the SNP and Annabel Goldie of the Scottish Conservatives had a forthright discussion on their cooperation in the future.
Scotland has a lot of problems, like funding the NHS and universities, poor health, too much drinking and creating worthwhile jobs that will last.
I wish the new government of Scotland a lot of luck. They’ll need it.
I have said many times, that Gordon Brown will rank alongside Lord North as one of our worst Prime Ministers. It would seem now that his country and his supposedly loyal supporters there have deserted his policies.
How To Make Money From Light Bulbs
You sell them to the Ministry of Defence according to this report from the BBC.
It has always been thus? I can remember stories like Lockheed selling toilet seats to the USAF for hundreds of dollars, when they could be bought for just a few dollars in many stores.
The military has always been a soft touch and not just in the UK.
Brown’s Aircraft Carrier Too Many
The Times really lays into Gordon Brown this morning about the purchase of a second aircraft carrier, which more than likely will never be used by any fixed wing aircraft.
This was what greeted Gordon Brown this morning from the front page of The Times.
Taxpayers will have to pick up the £2.6 billion bill for the controversial aircraft carrier that will never carry jets because Gordon Brown agreed an “unbreakable” contract designed to protect shipbuilding jobs in Scotland.
Under a 15-year agreement signed with BAE Systems, the Labour Government guaranteed work for the company’s shipyards on the River Clyde and in Portsmouth.
This included the £5.2 billion contract to build two new aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy, which David Cameron revealed this week that he was unable to cancel.
When the coalition looked at axing one of the carriers to save money, BAE responded that the Government would still have to pay shipworkers to do nothing for the remaining 12 years of the deal. However, at no point did Mr Cameron’s ministers seek to renegotiate the shipbuilding agreement with BAE, according to the company.
It looks like game, set and match to BAE!
As I said earlier, big contracts are too important for politicians to get involved.
What is also interesting is that despite all these bribes to his friends in heartland constituencies and trade unions, Brown still lost. So we’re all having to pay for the idiot’s bribes and mismanagement!
It’s about time, politicians were made liable for some of their disasterous decisions and purchases.
Do We Need Trident?
Trident is going to cost £20 billion to replace and the government has announced that the MoD must find the full cost from its budget. So if we renew it, other programs will have to be cut back.
I don’t think that we now need programs such as Trident! When we had an obvious enemy in the Cold War, it was different, but suppose some Iranian terrorists planned to let off a bomb in London, would being able to bomb Teheran deter them? Of course not! Perhaps all we need is a few submarine- or air-lauched cruise missiles, so that we could make sure that we got some revenge.
I also question other programs like the two aircraft carriers. For the type of wars we would fight today, it would be better to stay with our current smaller ones and Harriers.
The trouble is that defence has nothing to do with what you need, it’s all about pride. If say the French have nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers, our politicians feel, we should have them too.
It could be argued that the British intervention in Sierra Leone to help end the civil war there is a model for how our forces should be used to bring peace and stability to the world. Have we got the right forces and equipment to do the same again?
Defence Spending
A report in The Sunday Times says that British defence spending is out-of-control and actually harms the efficiency of the armed forces. A few damning paragraphs.
The author of the report, Bernard Gray, a leading businessman and former special adviser to Labour defence ministers, writes: “How can it be that it takes 20 years to buy a ship, or aircraft, or tank?
“Why does it always seem to cost at least twice what was thought?
“Even worse, at the end of the wait, why does it never quite seem to do what it was supposed to?”
Was it though ever any different? I have been involved in planning defence projects since the early 1970s and I’ve heard complaints of this nature all the time. And not just from the British, but from high-up engineers in a major US defence contractor.
I’ve also spoken to senior military men, who have always had good reasons to believe that the armed services never really get the equipment, they need to do the job. Usually it is over specified to do too many roles and hence so costly, that we can’t afford enough of them.
We need much better value for money and equipment that is much better suited for the job.
Why Trident?
I was always someone who thought we needed a nuclear deterrent.
But not now, as who do we use it against?
So when I read this article in The Times by Cardinal Keith O’Brien, I was more or less in agreement. Read and make your own decision.
The Anonymous Widower 