I suspect the Loren Thompson commentary “SBIRS Backup Plan Looks Like Another Misstep” may be correct as printed in the April 24 issue of Space News , although I do not agree with the 10-year time scale for the backup — it can be shorter . While I have not reviewed the SBIRS (Space Based Infrared System ) program, I have spent a greater part of my life in the military space business, and this situation sounds familiar. I saw the unfolding of this program from the late 1980s as Boost Surveillance and Tracking System through the mid-1990s, a history that is worth discussing at another time. The question that comes to mind is: What process was used to come up with the current SBIRS backup plan? It seems to me that if the Defense Department believes, as I do, that the Tactical Warning/Attack Assessment (TW/AA) mission of the Defense Support Program (DSP) satellite constellation is as important today as it was in the past, then the process for defining a backup plan would have to be ruthless in its approach to assuring a basic TW/AA capability as the DSP constellation degrades.
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