US Navy, Environment Groups Clash Over Weapons Tests in Atlantic

The Navy is reassuring the public that its requested permit for military testing in the Atlantic Ocean will impose only minimal harm to endangered whales and other mammals, even though the activities include the use of missile, torpedo, radar, and sonar systems.

But environmental groups are expected to push back, on the grounds that species like the North Atlantic right whale and Rice’s whale are so endangered that more care must be taken to minimize the impacts on them.

Covering 2.6 million square miles, the permit—now in its fourth iteration—is among the largest ever granted. The permitted area would include the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea.

Navy officials say they have spent vast amounts of time and money studying the affected species, and that they now have a much fuller understanding of the impact of environmental stresses, such as loud sonar blasts.

Military officials further point out that training and testing in the Atlantic has already been authorized under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act. Those activities have been going on for decades under three previous permits, the Navy says, and the new permit doesn’t include significantly different impacts, Laura Busch, natural resources program manager at the US Fleet Forces Command, said in an interview.

But “the problem is that the Navy has developed its plans in a black box,” said Michael Jasny, director of marine mammals at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It hasn’t provided a meaningful range of alternatives.”

Recent Litigation

Environmentalists say they have recent court precedent on their side.

In 2015, a federal court in Hawaii found that the National Marine Fisheries Service—the same agency the Navy is trying to get its permit from now—hadn’t done its own analysis of the Navy’s mitigation measures, and instead had simply accepted the Navy’s position.

The following year, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Navy’s mitigation plan for other training and testing with high-powered sonar was inadequate.

On the other hand, the Supreme Court upheld the Navy’s authority to use sonar in military exercises in its 2008 Winter v. Nat. Res. Def. Council decision. Chief Justice John Roberts, in his majority opinion, wrote that “the Navy’s need to conduct realistic training with active sonar to respond to the threat posed by enemy submarines plainly outweighs the interests advanced by the plaintiffs.”

But that decision was limited to a specific circumstance off the coast of California, and the court also stressed that “military interests do not always trump other considerations, and we have not held that they do.”

Nevertheless, courts have historically been reluctant to “go toe to toe with national security concerns,” said Steve Mashuda, managing attorney of Earthjustice’s oceans program.

In some cases that’s because the armed forces have a built-in advantage: the right not to disclose information about their activities, on the grounds of secrecy, according to Mashuda.

National Security Concerns

If a new environmental impact statement (EIS) isn’t issued before the existing one expires in November 2025, Navy officials say they may have to stop training and testing operations in the Atlantic, which could jeopardize national security.

The Navy is anticipating a record of decision in September 2025, less than two years after the notice of intent was filed. The 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act broadly requires federal agencies to wrap up their impact statements within two years. Navy officials say they’re on track to meet their schedule, but also that it won’t be easy to meet.

The sheer breadth and scope of the activities in the area—which includes aircraft and ship operations, enemy submarine detection, and mine disposal—is critical for sailors, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen, the Navy says.

Some of those activities can be done in simulated environments, but many of them can’t be adequately recreated virtually, Jill Sears, environmental program manager at the US Fleet Forces Command, said in an interview.

The effort also demonstrates the sheer might the Navy, which requested $250 billion for its budget in fiscal 2025, can bring to any legal matter.

Dozens of personnel are dedicated to the supplemental EIS, and that number has at times surged as high as 60, Busch said.

Over the years the military has gotten better at mitigating its activities, but also “better at papering over the problems,” Mashuda said.

“Lots of the earlier litigation that was happening on this for 10 or 15 years was really aimed at an agency that had not been used to complying with environmental statutes for most of its history,” Mashuda said. “It’s changed the way it operates to some degree, but it’s also gotten a lot more sophisticated and smarter about the presentation of its activities.”

Environmental trade-offs in the name of national security are often worth it, said Mario Loyola, a former official at the Council on Environmental Quality under President Donald Trump.

“No matter how awesome a military exercise sounds, it’s nothing like the scale of the environmental impact of commercial activity,” said Loyola, now a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “You only need a few warships to have strategic impact. In the grand scheme of things, the environmental impact is just too small to register.”