Comment by CGMthrowaway
7 hours ago
Treating offshore wind like ports and pipelines from a security POV makes sense, it's exactly what we do with offshore O&G. The rub is that securing offshore wind installations is an order of magnitude more resource-intensive than securing a deepwater rig, bc you're talking about a perimeter than spans 100's of square miles, not a single platform with a limited # of risers
From an attack PoV that's hundreds of square miles to destroy or disable many structures Vs taking out a single target.
ie. They can nibble a bit at an array before you're onto them Vs everything gets thrown at a point source target.
What about some kind of mass underwater drone attack? Feels like it might be feasible in the not too distant future...
Is that especially simpler than e.g. an attack on the above ground cabling systems by firing carbon fibre conducting wires over them, as the US is said to have done in the Iraq war? Not that I don't think underwater drones are a future risk, but the belief its a risk which can't be mitigated, or a worse risk than ones which exist onshore, seems a bit weak.
But none the less, yes. This would be a risk. Perhaps one which demands better drone detection and defence systems around wind turbines and O&G fields?
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Say that it is .. it's still hard to near simultaneously take out all wind generators than to mass swarm (with a smaller number) a single platform, well head grouping, or onshore processing facility.
Recall the context - a field of many wind generators Vs one or two platforms in order to "take down" a state's power grid.
Ropes are strong because of many strands.
That would seem like either an excellent way to start a new war, or a galactically stupid way to try to end one.
If you wanted to defend an O&G field, wouldn't you need to consider a similar extent? per wellhead, yes. but the go to a concentrator for onshore feed don't they? or some kind of attached floating rig, which itself is a SPF.
I thought fields had 100s of square km of extent too. The exclusion zone after nordstream is now pretty big, albiet "temporary" according to the web its 5 to 7 nm so 9 to 13 km so close to 100 km^2
All of which are continually manned. Not so w/ offshore wind
Don't wind turbines get serviced a few times a year? I would bet that on any given day there will be people at the farms.
> Treating offshore wind like ports and pipelines from a security POV makes sense
No it does not. Even if you'd manage to disable an entire wind farm, the impact on the grid as a whole is negligible. An attacker has to spend a whole lot of effort on such an attack for very little, if any at all, gain.
In contrast, shell a port or the right piece of infrastructure [1] and entire economies can get wrecked. And shell an oil rig... I mean, I seriously hope even the Russians don't sink that low but hey they did attack a goddamn NPP and a hydropower dam... anyway, taking out an oil rig risks an environmental disaster similar to Deepwater Horizon. That's a lot more effect for an opponent.
The actual threat to wind farms is software. We've seen that in the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine - the Russians took down satellite modems [2], causing about 6000 wind turbines to lose their command infrastructure and thus stop generating power.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_colla...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viasat_hack