From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Thomas English

The German Cabinet proposed an amendment Wednesday that would allow its armed forces to shoot down mysterious drones flying over military installations and critical infrastructure, while U.S. authorities took no such actions when faced with a similar threat over its bases in 2024.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandros Mayorkas dismissed calls to shoot down unidentified aircraft over northeastern military installations as “dangerous” in December. In contrast, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser proposed an amendment to the country’s armed forces to “engage” the drones, especially when they threaten lives or endanger critical infrastructure.

“It’s not as though anyone can just take down a drone in the sky — that in and of itself would be dangerous,” Mayorkas told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in December. “Our authorities are very limited … we can’t just shoot a drone out of the sky.”

Faeser, on the other hand, announced an amendment to Germany’s existing Aviation Security Act after authorities spotted drones over Ramstein Air Base, where Ukrainian forces are trained to use Abrams tanks, according to SWR, a German public broadcaster. They suspect Russian forces are using drones to spy on Ukrainian military developments. Authorities also reported drones over various chemical and technology manufacturing plants.

“Since Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine, we have seen an increasing deployment of drones that present growing challenges for the police and their current technology,” Faeser, translated from German, said in a statement Wednesday. Therefore, it is essential to create an authority within the Aviation Security Act allowing the Bundeswehr to intervene in severe threats, including the use of force to shoot down illegally operating drones as a last resort … It also sends a clear message: We will not be intimidated and will decisively confront current threats.”

The Department of Defense’s (DOD) Joint Staff released a statement on the drone sightings in December, writing that they too had observed drones flying over military installations. Authorities said they spotted unidentified aircraft over Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle, both in New Jersey.

“This is not a new issue for us. We’ve had to deal with drone incursions over our bases for quite a time now. It’s something that we routinely respond to in each and every case when reporting is cited,” a Joint Staff spokesperson said. “To date, we have no intelligence or observations that would indicate that they were aligned with a foreign actor or that they had malicious intent. But … we don’t know. We have not been able to locate or identify the operators or the points of origin.”

NEWS: @thejointstaff Addresses Drones Over New Jersey Military Installationshttps://t.co/o0aOdQKtc7

— Department of Defense 🇺🇸 (@DeptofDefense) December 14, 2024

DJI, a Chinese drone manufacturer and the most popular drone brand in the U.S., announced Monday it removed software prohibiting users from flying over restricted airspace, such as airport runways, nuclear power plants and the White House. The update reclassifies what were previously “restricted zones” to “enhanced warning zones,” which DJI says will “plac[e] control back in the hands of the drone operators” who “bear final responsibility.”

The amendment to the German law, which has not yet passed the country’s federal parliament, would allow the military to fire on the drones if deemed a threat to lives or critical infrastructure. Under the current version of the law, German authorities are prohibited from shooting down the aircraft.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

One of the early decision points to be faced by incoming President Donald Trump will be what to do about the Biden administration’s costly and destructive offshore wind vanity projects in the northeastern Atlantic.

The Biden White House decided to make federal subsidization of and rapid permitting for a growing array of these big industrial installations a top priority early in the administration, and the results thus far have been halting, and in some cases disastrous.

Acting to suspend the installation of hundreds of gigantic wind turbines in the midst of known whale habitats and prime commercial fishing waters is apparently a priority for Trump and his team. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R.-N.J.) announced on Monday that he has been “working closely” with Trump to draft an executive order that would invoke a 6-month moratorium on offshore wind construction with an eye towards a permanent suspension.

“These offshore wind projects should have never been approved in the first place,” said Van Drew, whose home-state beaches have been littered by dozens of whale carcasses since development began. “The Biden administration rammed them through the approval process without proper oversight, transparent lease agreements, or a full understanding of their devastating consequences. They are an economic and environmental disaster waiting to happen.”

Van Drew characterized the Biden administration’s green new deal agenda as “harmful” and one that put politics over people”, adding, “This executive order is just the beginning. We will fight tooth and nail to prevent this offshore wind catastrophe from wreaking havoc on the hardworking people who call our coastal towns home.”

There can be little question that, in its zeal to fast-track these enormously costly and inefficient wind projects, the Biden regulators essentially abandoned what is known as the “precautionary principle” that the same regulatory agencies have always applied to offshore oil and gas and other major projects in federal waters.

The precautionary principle essentially cautions regulators to act on the adage that it is better to be safe than sorry. It holds that if there is a risk of severe harm to the environment or animal life, an absence of any scientific or conclusive proof is not to be given as the reason for inaction. This principle places the burden of proof on the shoulders of the person who denies their project is harmful.

This principle has been used by federal regulators of the U.S. offshore many times to halt oil-and-gas projects for years at a time so that proper environmental studies can be conducted under governing laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA).

The Biden White House was only too eager to cite the OCSLA recently to justify a ban on future drilling across 625 million acres of federal waters on the specious reasoning that it was “too dangerous” to allow future generations to enjoy the benefits of the billions of barrels of oil known to lie beneath these waters. This is absurd overkill, but it is also an example of the exercise of the precautionary principle.

But since 2022, as communities from New Jersey up to Maine have raised serious concerns about potential negative impacts by these massive wind industrial projects on sea mammals, seabirds and the region’s commercial fishing industry, Biden’s regulators have tossed the precautionary principle aside.

There is another principle at stake here that Trump should address: The equal and consistent application of U.S. law. It is a principle that the Biden administration chose to abandon in its zeal to enact its green agenda, from the cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline to the unjustified LNG permitting pause.

Actions such as these, in which multi-billion-dollar investments are lost based solely on executive whims, make it much harder for company management teams to take on big projects in this country. Who wants to risk billions of capital dollars on any project when it becomes impossible to predict how laws will be applied by future presidents?

President Trump would be wise to place restoration of these two key principles of offshore energy development atop his list of priorities.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.