THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Perhaps it is on Vladimir Putin's orders or maybe it is Trump's jealousy of men and women who have the courage he lacks. Or simply because he is astonishingly incompetent. Whatever reason, under Trump's aegis another step has been taken to defer the military's readiness for the future.

Camp Lejeune’s 55,000 shiny solar panels, like other renewable energy projects on military bases across the country, are on the front lines of a plan to provide backup power in case terrorists, cyber saboteurs or violent weather cripple the nation’s electric grid.

But President Donald Trump has all but eradicated the words “renewable energy” from the agenda and, according to two former Pentagon officials, slowed progress toward upgrading emergency electricity supplies at bases like Camp Lejeune.

Now it’s no longer clear that the Pentagon will make use of all of the solar farms installed both to combat global warming and to enhance national security at U.S. installations here and abroad.

McClatchy gathered data on more than 70 bases that have partnered with electric utilities in solar energy projects that were part of an effort toward replacing decades-old backup systems relying on costly and sometimes unreliable diesel generators.

Only a couple of dozen bases, mainly small ones, have so far incorporated their solar projects into new, computer-commanded configurations known as “microgrids,” as experts recommend. Microgrids blend and distribute energy from multiple resources to provide reliable emergency power at less cost.

A microgrid could include large-scale battery storage and any of a range of options, including solar, natural gas, diesel generators, biomass, wind turbines, geothermal, hydrogen-based fuel cells and even small-module nuclear reactors. If any of these sources failed or needs replenishing, the computer program would instantly switch to another.

“I am concerned, and I am frustrated,” said Dennis McGinn, a retired admiral who as an assistant Navy secretary managed both that service’s and many of the Marine Corps’ energy needs during Obama’s second term. Progress, he said, “has slowed down,” even while private-sector technology is leaping ahead.

After Hurricane Florence’s tropical winds and days-long deluge hammered Camp Lejeune last month, knocking out power for days, the rows of solar panels installed by Duke Energy were useless. On a normal day, they feed Duke’s other customers in and around Jacksonville, N.C. Three years after its activation, the system was not yet fully wired so its electricity could be redirected to the base during an emergency.

As a precaution a few days before Florence hit, Duke turned off the solar project that converts photons in the sun’s rays to electricity, in case flooding or other conditions might make it a safety hazard, company spokesman Randy Wheeless said.

Lejeune and the nearby Marine Air Station at Cherry Point, N.C.. relied on their diesel generators to ride out days of post-Florence power outages.

The rising risks to the U.S. electric grid in recent years have awakened the Pentagon to the possibility that a lengthy outage could paralyze military bases if their backup diesel generators, most of which experts say are poorly maintained, perform poorly.

The cyber threat is now so great that federal agencies must contend with tens of thousands of incidents each year. Last March, a government alert revealed the FBI and Department of Homeland Security had detected that “Russian government cyber actors” had gained “remote access” to U.S. energy sector networks.

“What the Army has recognized is that there is an increasing possibility of a longer event,” said Executive Director Michael McGhee of the Army Office of Energy Initiatives. “There is now sophistication among people who want to do harm to the power grid.”

Further, the catastrophic damage from Hurricanes Sandy, Harvey, Florence and Michael on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts since 2012 could be a harbinger of worse onslaughts to come. Scientists warn that seas warming from climate change will produce ever stronger hurricanes in the years ahead.

So the initiatives begun by the military to protect and preserve the power necessary for its systems are given short shrift by a buffoon who wants to go back to coal for their needs. Orange Julius sure as hell ain't no Caesar.