How many wind projects has the Pentagon frozen
How many wind projects has the Pentagon frozen. At least 108 of them nationwide, worth 62 billion dollars in investment, and the count comes from a court record, not from the wind industry itself. A federal judge in Oregon ruled on August 6, 2026, that the Department of Defense broke the law by simply refusing to keep reviewing them.
The deadlines the Pentagon is bound to meet, and is not
The freeze runs through an office called the Siting Clearinghouse, created by Congress in 2011 to check whether a wind project near a military base threatens radar or other operations. The regulation that created it, in force today, gives the Clearinghouse 30 days to evaluate a formal application, 50 days for an informal review, up to 90 days for the developer and the Pentagon to negotiate fixes, and 30 days to report a finding of unacceptable risk to Congress. These figures come directly from the regulation itself, 32 CFR Part 211, not from a description someone else wrote of it.
These 4 deadlines come from 32 CFR Part 211, the regulation that created the Pentagon Siting Clearinghouse, read directly for this article rather than from any description of it.
Show the numbers
| Evaluate a formal application | 30 |
| Report an unacceptable risk finding to Congress | 30 |
| Complete an informal review | 50 |
| Negotiate mitigation agreements | 90 |
The Clearinghouse stopped meeting that schedule starting August 2025. United States District Judge Karin Immergut described the collapse in her written order.
Beginning in August 2025, DOD incrementally stopped processing proposed wind energy projects, and on May 7, 2026, DOD's review of wind energy projects ground to a halt.
Karin Immergut, United States District Judge for the District of Oregon, in her written order. Source 4.
From that date to her August 6, 2026 ruling, review sat completely stopped for 91 days by this article count, about 3 times longer than the 30 day deadline the regulation sets for a formal application.
91 is a count made for this article of the days from May 7, 2026, when the Department of Defense review stopped completely, to August 6, 2026, when a federal judge ruled the freeze unlawful, both dates from source 4. The 30 day figure is the deadline the regulation sets for a formal review, source 1, shown here for comparison, not a number source 4 states.
Show the numbers
| Deadline the rule sets | 30 |
| Days frozen before the ruling | 91 |
Renewable Northwest and about 20 states with Democratic governors sued over the freeze on May 31, 2026. At least 25 named projects in that case were stuck in Pentagon review when the suit was filed. Judge Immergut found the freeze itself, not any single project decision, violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the federal law that requires an agency to explain its reasoning rather than simply stop acting.
A separate freeze hit offshore wind directly
A separate and more specific action froze offshore wind on its own. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management ordered the Revolution Wind project, off Rhode Island and Connecticut, to halt work on August 22, 2025, then issued a further order on December 22, 2025, suspending all work for 90 days, stated explicitly as a national security measure. Reporting found this reached 5 major East Coast offshore wind projects altogether. That action stands apart from the nationwide 108 project count above, which covers wind projects generally and is mostly land based.
The wind industry says the review has gone too far
Frank Macchiarola, Chief Advocacy Officer of the American Clean Power Association, the wind industry trade group, does not dispute the Pentagon security review itself, before arguing the freeze itself goes too far. He points out the Pentagon has kept processing other kinds of energy projects, power plants, transmission lines and oil and gas infrastructure, while wind alone sits stopped.
That is a legitimate and important responsibility. National security must come first.
Frank Macchiarola, Chief Advocacy Officer of the American Clean Power Association. Source 5.
The ruling does not by itself restart a single project. It tells the Department of Defense that its own process broke the law, and leaves the Pentagon to decide whether to appeal or resume the reviews it stopped keeping to its own clock.