Comments on: SBIRS Problems Persist: New Sats Needed

By: bill

bill — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:02:54 +0000

There are more people identifying problems than people who can solve them. The “A” team is gone, retired and now we have the “lets study this” team in place. It’s easy to study problems try solving them. The SPACE X people are the only team that seem to be moving forward on anything. The big DOD companies continue to suck up dollars and provide services of cost overrun, behind schedule, and inferior products when they are delivered. It’s time for a total reboot of our SPACE programs. Stop paying the losers and open up the competition and reward the winners.

By: DensityDuck

DensityDuck — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:19:44 +0000

Brian: SBIRS High is a staring sensor. DSP uses a scanning line sensor, which was why the s/v rotated (the line sweeps over the visible hemisphere during the rotation.)

Colin: There are many images of SBIRS GEO (aka “SBIRS High”) out there. Although I don’t know if there is any particular copyright status you’re looking for.

DD: God forbid YOU ever experience requirements creep.

By: Brian W

Brian W — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:56:47 +0000

The pic is of a DSP satellite, which was the older (but still active) IR constellation in GEO that SBIRS-GEO was slated to replace.

SBIRS originally was going to have three constellations — one in GEO, one in HEO, and one in LEO. Two of the HEO birds have been launched and are working great, but as Colin said they are hosted payloads riding on “other satellites” whose identities have not been revealed. So no pics.

SBIRS-Low, originally envisioned as dozens of satellites, got separated out, massively restructured, and renamed Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) which is now an MDA Program:
http://www.nti.org/e_research/official_docs/mda/mda13004_stss.pdf

SBIRS-High was supposed to have 4 satellites in GEO to complement the HEO ones and these are the satellites that are still way behind schedule and over budget. However, since they are performing largely the same mission as DSP did, I would think they would be generally the same shape (a rotating cone).

By: Colin Clark

Colin Clark — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:49:06 +0000

It’s the closest pic I could find of a similar function. The SBIRS Geo is hosted payload and I don’t know what the sat looks like…

By: LM

LM — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:27:28 +0000

What’s that picture of? Because it’s certainly not SBIRS GEO.

By: Colin Clark

Colin Clark — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:48:30 +0000

JS, 3GIRS is Third Generation Infra-Red Surveillance is AIRSS is.…. as best I can tell.

By: JS

JS — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:40:50 +0000

Colin, I was under the impression that 3GIRS was also a replacement/next generation system for SBIRS. It should be noted that 3GIRS received a huge boost by the Senate Appropriators: +$104M.

By: DD

DD — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:21:12 +0000

I was at the AFA conference this morning. I went in the exhibit hall and walked up to the SBIRS program booth to see what they had in the way of swag (not much) and the woman behind the table said in a cheerful voice “Good morning! Do you know anything about the program?”

Without skipping a beat I replied “Like that it is eight years behind schedule and $8 billion over budget?”

She wasn’t pleased with my comment and replied through a forced grin “It’ll be worth it.”

I felt slightly bad about being a jerk to the nice lady, but then I got home and read this article.