The Wall Street Journal [subscription required] reports Friday that the troubled SBIRS missile-warning satellite program will survive a Nunn-McCurdy review with no major changes. The Pentagon has apparently rejected proposals to cancel the program or transfer it to another contractor; instead, the Air Force will “restructure the project and impose tighter Pentagon oversight”. The restructuring will apparently make some of the project funding for later phases of the program contingent on the performance of the first two SBIRS satellites to be built. Space News had reported in this week’s print edition that the Pentagon had been considering trimming the program and perhaps developing a gapfiller satellite should SBIRS continue to be delayed; that less-expensive gapfiller might use infrared sensors developed for NASA programs rather than defense satellites.
(I don’t have a WSJ subscription.)
When it says, “contingent on the performance of the first two SBIRS satellites to be built,” can you tell if this means the two HEO satellites for which sensor packages have already been delivered, or two yet-to-be-built GEO sats? Any indication of when the two satellites are expected to be launched?
BTW, is SBIRS-Low still alive?
When it says, “contingent on the performance of the first two SBIRS satellites to be built,” can you tell if this means the two HEO satellites for which sensor packages have already been delivered, or two yet-to-be-built GEO sats?
The article doesn’t specify. In fact, the article doesn’t draw a distinction between the GEO satellites and the HEO sensor packages, calling them all just “satellites”.
BTW, is SBIRS-Low still alive?
SBIRS-Low was renamed the Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) a while back, and seems to be moving along, albeit slowly. Here’s a fact sheet dated September 2005 from MDA:
http://www.mda.mil/mdalink/pdf/sbx1.pdf
Yes, SIBRS Low is still around. Current plan is for four SIBRS Low satellites in LEO and two SIBRS High satellites in GEO. This is a substantially reduced architecture from previous versions.
gapfiller might use infrared sensors developed for NASA programs In the spirit of “a bird in hand. . . ,” maybe whatever NASA sensor they’re talking about should be the primary sensor, and evolved toward something better. It seems to me that the clear lesson from recent events is that the military is trying too many leaps in technology, each of which is too high a jump.
— Donald